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Buffalo Commercial Advertiser Campaign Document 



No. 1. 



THE PRESIDENTIAL BATTLE OF 1872. 



GRANT AND HIS DEFAMERS: DEEDS AGAINST WORDS. 



SPEECH 




HON. KOSCOE COtfKLIM, 

At Cooper Institute, New York, July 23, 1872. 



"A r o might nor greatness in mortality 
Can censure 'scape ; back-wounding calumny 
The whitest virtue strikes; what king so strong, 
Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue? ' 

■ — Measure for Measure. 



The Republican mass meeting held on Tues- 
day evening, July 23d, 1872, at Cooper Insti- 
tute, New York, to ratify the nominations of 
Grant and Wilson, was remarkable in point 
of numbers, respectability and enthusiasm. 

Long before the hour for the opening of the 
proceedings the large hall of the Institute was 
densely crowded. Many ladies were among 
the audience. Every seat in the lobby, hall, 
and on the stage was occupied, and hundreds 
were glad to obtain standing room. 

The Hon. Jackson S. Schultz presided, 
and a long list of Vice-Presidents and Secreta- 
ries was read. The Hon. Roscoe Conkling, 
U. S. Senator, on being introduced by the 
President, was received with loud and repeated 
cheers. After the applause had subsided, he 
said : 

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen : 
Your greeting of me tonight, and the warmth 
of your reception, quite oppress me. I have no 
words to fitly express my feelings. 

For twenty years, it has been my privilege to 
address my neighbors upon political issues, and 
loo much ardor, has, perhaps, been among my 
faults. Yet no canvass has ever stirred me so 
deeply as this. No election has ever appealed 
so strongly to my sense of fair play, no canvass 
within my memory has ever been so full of foul 
play, injustice and malice, none has ever more 
thoroughly tested the common sense and gen- 
erosity of the American people. 

INJUSTICE HEAPED ON THE PRESIDENT. 

Eleven years' service in Congress has made 
me a close observer of four Presidents and of 



many public men ; and if among them all there 
is one, living or dead, who never knowingly 
failed in his duty, that one is Ulysses Sydney 
Grant. There was forecast in giving him the 
name of .Sydney, for his greatest and gentlest 
quality is his magnanimity. If there has been a 
high official ever ready to admit and correct an 
error ; if there has been one who did wisely, 
firmly and well the things given him in charge, 
that one is the soldier in war and the quiet 
patriot in peace, who has been named again by 
every township in forty-six States and Territo- 
ries for the great trust he now holds. Yet this 
man, honest, brave and modest, and proved by 
his transcendant deeds to be endowed with 
genius, common sense and moral qualities, ade- 
quate to the greatest affairs ; this man who 
saved his cou 
and our cans 
his shield th' 
but for him 
man, under 
has flourish 
man, to wh . 

tion are due, is made the mark for ribald jibes 
and odious, groundless slanders. Why is all 
this? Simply because he stands in the way of 
the greed and ambition of politicians and 
schemers. Many honest men join in the cry, 
or hear it without indignation. They are de- 
ceived by the cloud of calumny which darkens 
the sky ; but the inventors are men distempered 
with griefs, or else the sordid and the vile, who 
follow politics as the shark follows the ship. 
A war of mud and missiles has been waged for 
months. The President, his family, and all 
nearly associated with him have been bespat- 
tered, and truth and decency have been driven 
far away. Every thief, and cormorant, and 
drone who has been put out ; every baffled 
mouser for place or plunder ; every man with a 



The President and His Slanderers. 



'CI* 



grievance of a grudge ; all who have something 
to make by a change, seem to wag an unbtidle- 
ed tongue or to drive a foul pen. 

The President cannot enter the lists of con- 
troversy and defend himself ; the proprieties of 
his station forbid it ; his chief competitor, 
managing behind the curtain a newspaper 
from which he pretends to have retired, is free 
to defend and puff himself, and feels free to fill 
his paper with base and scurrilous falsehood, in 
the hope of blackening a name which is one 
of the treasures of the nation and which will be 
the pride of posterity. All this pollution will, 
in the end, disgrace only its authors ; it will not 
disgrace Grant or the nation, because the na- 
tion will spurn and resent it. The disgusting 
personalities emptied upon Gen. Jackson se- 
cured his re-election ; an offended people struck 
back, and they will strike back again. 

WHERE THE OPPOSITION HAS BLUNDERED. 

The American people may misjudge a politi- 
cal question ; they may be deceived ; but, with 
the truth before them, they will never be unjust, 
and never untrue upon a question of right and 
wrong. Ingratitude has been charged upon 
Republics, and just there is the point where the 
angry enemies of the President have blundered. 
Had the cool veterans of the Democracy formed 
or selected the issues to be presented, they would 
have been wise enough to so frame them that 
the people could decide in their favor without 
Axing a stigma upon Gen. Grant, and without 
blasting his name or doing him wrong. But the 
Democratic statesmen, the leaders in a hundred 
fights, have been mere lookers on; leadership 
has been assumed by Republican renegades and 
"outs;" men so eaten up with envy, or so mad- 
dened with the loss or refusal of place and pat- 
ronage, that nothing would satisfy them short of 
a rancorous, revengeful, personal raid. When 
a man turns Turk he spits on the Cross, and 
when wide-throated ultra Republicans clandes- 
tinely trade with the enemy, and then turn 
open traitors to their party, they become the 
meanest and fiercest opponents, just as Yankee 
slave overseers from New England were always 
more brutal than those born in the South. 
When men whose vanity was hurt, and others 
nawed by ambjuan and. cupidity, went out to 
n' the party which they could not rule, mad- 
ness drove them on. They had no polar star, 
except hatred of Grant and his supporters. 
These lusty patriots who modestly assumed the 
name of "Reformers," would not have an ordi- 
nary Presidential canvass for the fair discussion 
of political questions; such a proceeding would 
In c been too tame and insipid for them. Their 
Stomachs craved stronger, more game-flavored 
meat ; hard names must be called ; vengeance 
must be satisfied ; the President must be politi- 
cally court-martialed or dragged before a na- 
tional assize to be tried as a malefactor. 

In the Senate the Democrats proper kept si- 
lent or talked about business ; I give them 
credit for wasting but little time ; but half the 
la-t session, ei^ht months in length, was worn 
out and wasted by slanderous electioneering 
harangues aimed at the Administration and its 
friends by men badly in need of being reformed 



themselves. These self-righteous and noisy or- 
acles pitched the key in which the anti-Grant 
chorus was to be sung, and hence comes the ab- 
sence of political questions and the presence of 
personal and scandalous issues. The public 
journals and newspaper correspondence from 
Washington, controlled by these "Liberals" — 
liberal in nothing so much as in defaming honest 
men and praising and helping themselves — took 
hue from the heart-burnings, distempers and 
ambitions which set them on. "Anything to 
beat Grant" was the motto, and it gratified 
their hate and spite to assail the President per- 
sonally, and to heap malignant charges upon 
him ; thus his character, his integrity, his stand- 
ing as a man, have been put in issue, and the 
people are compelled to pass upon his guilt or 
innocence. The case has been so put, that the 
question is not merely whether Grant shall be 
President, but whether Grant shall be pronounc- 
ed by the nation a fool, a knave, an impostor, 
an enemy of his country. Had issue been 
taken upon public measures, had public ques- 
tions been raised, whether new questions or 
those which have divided parties heretofore, 
a popular verdict would have been a verdict 
only between parties, and policies, and princi- 
ples. Such a verdict would have rested upon 
public grounds, personal and disparaging to. 
no one. 

If the political views the President represents 
are not those of a majority there is no injustice 
and no reflection upon any one in so saying and 
so voting. But when he is arraigned for ignor- 
ance, dishonesty and vice, and for nothing else,, 
the case is different. 

PLATFORM MADE UP OF SLANDERS OF DIS- 
APPOINTED MEN. 

What is the arraignment? What political 
position held by the Republican Party or its 
candidates does the "Any thing-to-beat-Grant" 
coalition deny? Will anyone tell me? Read 
the manifesto put forth at Cincinnati, which Mr. 
Greeley did over in improved words, as he 
thought, in his letter of acceptance. Read the 
address lately published by Mr. Greeley and his 
committee, soliciting the votes of the people of 
this State. These papers, in so far as they 
refer to the Administration, are a gross personal 
libel upon the President, and they are nothing 
more. 

Hear the words of the self-constituted crowd 
at Cincinnati — that motley group made up of a 
few respectable men who have since repudiated 
it, and of the most piebald, disreputable collec- 
tion to be scraped from the gutters and sewers 
of politics. These political lazzaroni, pretend- 
ing to represent States, laid down the platform 
on which Mr. Greeley thinks he is running. 
See how it reads ; 

The President of the TTnited States has openly used 
the powers and opportunities of his high office for the 
promotion of personal ends. 

He has kept notoriously corrupt and unworthy men in 
places of power and responsibility, to the detriment of 
the public interest. 

He has used the public service of the Government as 
a machinery of corruption and personal influence, and 
has interfered, with tyrannical arrogance, in the political 
affairs of States and municipalities. 

He has rewarded with influential and lucrative officii 



Senator Conklin'fs Great Speech at Xeio York. 



> 



men who have acquired his favor by valuable presents, 
thus stimulating l!ie demoralization of our political lile by 
his conspicuous example. 
-»». He has shown himself deplorably unequal to the ta ;ks 
imposed upon him by the necessities of tni 
culpably careless of the responsibility of hi, high, office. 

Mr. Greeley's personal backers and trainers 
"-'recently delighted the public with an address, 
„ embroidered with the rhetoric and signature 
of Mr. John Cochrane. This paper, gorgeous 
in composition, speaks of the Cincinnati fiasco 
as "one of the most stately and brilliant par- 
liaments ever assembled in this country." These 
rainbow-dyed words show on what sky-scraping 
pinions the "Liberal" eagle soars. Sec how 
this gloomy and peculiar monarch of the clouds 
swoops down on the poor pigmy ami truant of 
Appomattox. Observe the awful obscurity, 
grand even in parenthesis, with which he "goes 
for" his prey, as another reformer "went for 
that heathen Chinee": 

The history of the Administration is a shadowy record 
of discreditable {sometimes disgraceful) acts— many of 
them blunders; others, crimes. 

He has repeatedly shown himself on the one hand ig- 
norant of the laws, and on the other defiant of them. 

He has accepted gifts from flatterers, for which he has 
rendered dishonorable equivalents, by bestowing public 
emoluments on obsequious givers. 

These are but three of the seventeen personal 
crimes, of which the bright particular Cochrane 
appears as the avenging angel. Do such des- 
picable assertions and imputations raise any po- 
litical or party issue ? 

NOTHING TANGIBLE ABOUT TARIFF, AMNES- 
TY, OR CIVIL SERVICE REFORM. 

The tariff resolution, at Cincinnati, is a mere 
jurrgle — a shallow evasion, by which no one of 
common intelligence has a right to be cheated. 

The resolution about Congress and "central- 
ism," if they mean anything, refer to the exercise 
of powers by Congress everyone of which Mr. 
Greeley approved and demanded in his usual 
violent and unmeasured language. 

The amnesty resolution is spent, because a 
general amnesty bill was passed weeks ago. 

Every rebel votes, and every rebel may hold 
office now, except Jefferson Davis, and less 
than two hundred others, who still spurn for- 
giveness. There is nothing left of the amnesty 
question, unless some one wants to mount a 
dead horse in behalf of Jefferson Davis and his 
handful of cronies, who say that their perjury 
needs no forgiveness, and seeks none, and that 
they have no use just now in that way for those 
they keep to sign their bail bonds, and d * their 
other chores. 

Where, then, is the political issue the people 
are to pass upon? It cannot be "civil service 
reform," unless dishonesty is imputed to the 
President. He is for civil service reform ; he 
recommended it and inaugurated it, and the 
Philadelphia Convention specially declared for 
it. There can be no issue of that kind, except 
by pretending that Grant is a hypocrite, and 
that Greeley is not ; and neither of these things 
would be easy to prove. Mr. Greeley has 
plainly and repeatedly avowed, in public and in 
private, that his political action hinges on pat- 
ronage and spoils; without stopping to prove 
this now, I will recur to it hereafter. 



The coalition presents nothing of substance, 
on which parties or individuals are divided in 
principle, but only assaults upon the President. 

This is nothing more or less than a challenge 
of comparison between the candidates. The 
issue is narrowed to a single inquiry : Which is 
personally the safest, fittest man for the Presi- 
dency? That is the question, and the whole 
of it. 

DEMOCRACY GIVES UP — WHAT IS ASKED uF 
DEMOCRATS. 

Some things, however, are said and done ef- 
fectually by the platform and nomination of our 
opponents. They blot out and renounce the 
time-honored creed of the Democratic Party. 
That creed is laid aside and its vital points re- 
pudiated. 

It is fairly admitted that Democratic doctrines 
and Democratic candidates cannot stand before 
the judgment of the country. 

The Democracy confesses its defeat upon the 
great issues of the century, and confesses its 
error also. Equality of race ; emancipation of 
slaves ; the ballot for the blacks ; a protective 
tariff; exemption of Government bonds from 
taxation ; paying bonds in coin ; — upon these 
and other things, the Democracy at last con- 
fesses itself not only beaten but wrong, and the 
Republican Party victorious and right. Stop- 
ping here, the homage paid to the Republican 
Party would be great indeed, but we find greater 
tribute and homage still. 

Not only are the old grounds of difference 
given up, but no new ones can be found. 
What measure or doctrine of the Republican 
Party, again I ask, have our opponents ventur- 
ed to attack ? 

The Republican Party has been in power 
for years, responsible for all legislation in the 
greatest era of the nation, and now its life-long 
rival and adversary at last throws up the sponge, 
not daring to join issue upon one political ques- 
tion. 

Even the Kuklux and election bills are nd 
matters in difference, for Mr. Greeley supported 
them both, with all his virulent vocabulary. 
My own part in preparing and pressing the 
election law was, I remember, the occasion of 
my being praised in the Tribune. This puzzled 
me at the time, and suggested that I must 
have been doing something wrong, because the 
Tribune marked me for destruction after its 
editor was not elected to the Senate. Mr. 
Greeley must have been elated indeed over the 
Congressional election law, when his exuber- 
ance became so great that he could write a 
kind, or even a just or true, word of me. 

The only instances of alleged "centralism" 
being measures to which Mr. Greeley stands 
fully committed, the candidate and the plat- 
form together leave not a shred of anything 
Democratic. As if to abjure the last vestige of 
Democracy and wipe out its very memory, 
these vaulting managers have selected as their 
figurehead a professed ultra Republican, for- 
merly an ultra Whig, and they ask honest 
Democrats to vote for him, against a man born 
and bred a Democrat, who never acted with the 
Republican Party till after the war liad raised 



The President and His Slanderers". 



new issues on which Democrats divided. Demo- 
crats are asked to vote for that Republican 
who "out-Heroded Herod" always in politics 
and abuse, and who did more than any other 
man in the North to encourage secession and 
bring on the war. A Republican, coming 
from the Whig Party with such a record, now 
asks the votes of Democrats ! 

The anti-Grant managers are daring, if they 
are not silly. They attempt to crowd down the 
throats of Democrats who fought the Maine 
law, the man who drowned all other voices in 
his outcries for penal statutes and Sunday laws, 
to stop by force the drinking even of lager-beer. 

WHY SHOULD DEMOCRATS VOTE FOR 
GREELEY? 

If a Democrat was mnning, or if Democratic 
principles were ill the field, Democrats might be 
expected to vote the ticket ; but when the choice 
is between Republicans, and no Democratic 
principle is at stake, Democrats will be apt to 
pick and choose for themselves which Republi- 
can they will vote for, if they vote at all. 

Upon what ground will patriotic Democrats 
prefer Greeley to Grant? They must prefer 
Greeley because they disapprove Grant person- 
ally, or else because they disapprove some po- 
litical doctrine he represents. 

Are Democrats for repudiating the debt? Are 
they for agitating or annulling the Thirteenth, 
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of the 
Constitution? Would they re-establish slav- 
ery? Would they pay the rebel war debt, or 
pensions to rebel soldiers, or rebel war claims? 
Would they inflate the currency again, and flood 
the country with paper money? Are Demo- 
crats against reducing taxes and expenses ? Are 
Democrats opposed to peace with all nations, 
and stable government at home ? These ques- 
tions are not asked to impugn the position of 
any man, but for the opposite reason. 

Pres. Grant being tried and true in all these 
things, why should any Union man, or con- 
servative, or business - man, or patriot, vote 
against him, even if his competitor was a safe 
and fit man for President? Plainly there can 
be no reason, unless Grant is unworthy of confi- 
dence or respect, and deserves to be found guilty 
of the crimes and vices alleged against him. To 
judge this question we must examine his history 
and lay bare his life. "The tree is known by 
its fruit"; the carpenter by his chips; the man 
by his deeds. 

grant's education and boyhood. 

Grant cannot be illiterate, or, as a Greeley 
orator told an audience the other day, "ignorant 
of what school-boys know." 

lie was educated at West Point, and whoever 
graduates in that exacting school must have an 
education such as few Americans receive. 
Mental culture is not all we find in Grant at 
West Point. His letters written then stamp 
him with a character enough by itself to refute 
the worn and soiled tavern scandal which now 
offends the nostrils of the nation. Here is a 
letter to his mother, June 4, 1839. He was 
then seventeen. "As the twig is bent the tree 
is inclined." 



Let us see what kind of a boy the man grew 
out of. 

United States West Point Military Academy, 
June 4, 1839. 

My Dear Mother : I have occasionally been called 
to be separated from you, but never did I feel the full 
force and effect of this separation as 1 do now. I seem 
alone in the world without my mother. 'There have been 
so many ways in which you have advised me, when, hi 
the quiet of home, I have been pursuing my studies, 
that you cannot tell how much I miss you. When I was 
busy with father in the tannery, and on the farm, we 
were both more or less surrounded by others, who took 
up our attention and occupied our time. But, I was so 
often alone with you, and you spoke to me so frequently 
in private, that the solitude of my situation here at the 
Academy, among my silent books, and in my lonely room, 
is all the more striking. It reminds me all the more 
forcibly of home, and most of all, my dear mother, of 
you. But, in the midst of all this, your kind instructions 
and admonitions are ever present with me. 1 trust they 
may never be absent from me as long as I live. How 
often I think of them ! and how well do they strengthei* 
me in every good word and work ! 

My dear mother, should I progress well with my 
studies at West Point, and become a soldier for mi- 
country, I am looking forward with hope to have you 
spared to share with me in any advancement I may 
make. I see now, in looking over the records here, how 
much American soldiers of the right stamp are indebted 
to good American mothers ! When they go to the field, 
what prayers go with them ! What tender testimony of 
maternal affection and counsel are in their knapsacks ! 
I am struck, in looking over the history of the noble 
struggle of our fathers for national independence, at the 
evidence of the good influence exerted upon them by the 
women of the Revolution. Ah ! my beloved friend, 
how can the present generation ever repay the debt it 
owes the patriots of the past for the sacrifices they have 
so freely and richly made for us ? We may well ask. 
Would our country be what it is now, if it had not been 
for the greatness of our patriotic ancestors? Let me 
hear from you by letter as often as convenient, and send 
me such books as you think will help me. They can be 
forwarded through the courtesy of our member of 
Congress. 

Faithfully and most lovingly your son, 

ULYSSES. 

To his father he writes from West Point : 

I find much here that makes me love my dear native 
land more than ever. I am happy in the fact that this 
stronghold of nature is safely in the hands of the United 
States. Do you know, father, that it is called the Gib- 
raltar of America? * * * * 

As I return from my walk, refreshed by the exercise, 
inspired by the grand and varied scenery, and better pre- 
pared for my studies, I pass by the cemetery of the 
Academy, where some of our cherished dead repose. 
Here is the monument erected by our grateful country to 
the brave hero, Kosciusko, who fell on the field of battle, 
on American soil, fighting for the liberties of mankind. 
You remember, father, the line that is recorded of him : 
"And Freedom shrieked when Kosciusko fell." 

I am rendered serious by the impressions that crowd 
upon me here at West Point. My thoughts are frequently 
occupied with the hatred I am made to feel towards trai- 
tors to my country, as I look around me on the memorials 
that remain of the black-hearted treason of Arnold. I am 
full of a conviction of scorn and contempt, which my 
young and inexperienced pen is unable to write in this 
letter, toward the conduct of any man who, at any time, 
could strike at the liberties of such a nation as ours. If 
ever men should be found in our Union ba^e enough 
to make the attempt to do this : if, like Arnold, they 
should secretly seek to sell our national inheritance for 
the mess of pottage of wealth, or power, or section — ■ 
West Point sternly reminds me of what you, my father, 
would have your son do. As I stand here in this national 
fort, a student of arms under our country's flag, I know full 
well how you would have me act in such an emergency. 
I trust my, future conduct in such an hour would prove 
worthy the patriotic instructions you have given. 
Yours obediently, 
ULYSSES SYDNEY GRANT. 

Had the boy who wrote these letters a good 
and gentle nature ? Was he well grounded, or 



Senator Corikling^s Great Speech at New York. 



afloat? When did he lose the moral sense 
which there speaks out? 

From West Point he went to act a subordi- 
nate part in the Mexican war. lie acted it 
bravely, modestly and well. The Mexican war 
being over, his pay in the regular army would 
have gone on, and he might have lived in peace 
and idleness at the public cost, but, unwilling to 
be a drone, he became a tanner. 

THE "TANNER. OF GALENA." — WHAT HE 
TANNED. 

Mr. Sumner withers him by reminding us 
that "he tanned hides at Galena for a few hun- 
dred dollars a year." He did not masquerade 
as a wood-chopper; he did not figure in pic- 
torials as a farmer ; he did not go round telling 
" what he knew about " anything that he didn't 
understand himself; he minded his own busi- 
ness, and let other people's business alone ; but he 
worked with his hands as a hewer of wood, 
which he sold in the market, and wrought out 
a living for his family and himself. 

From the breaking out of the rebellion, his ca- 
reer is a " thrice-told tale " — the world knows it 
by heart. When the flag sank at Sumter, he did 
not wait to be called. Without commission, 
command, uniform, or shoulder-straps, he start- 
ed for the field, and grasping the Stars and 
Stripes, he carried them through a blaze of victo- 
ries such as no mortal man before him had won. 

While Senators who now hawk at him were 
lolling for a fourth term on cushions, and evis- 
cerating encyclopedias, books of quotations, and 
classical dictionaries, the Tanner of Galena 
swept rebellion from the Valley of the Mississip- 
pi, and the Father of Waters went unvexed to 
the sea. 

Lincoln and Stanton, who reposed unmeas- 
ured confidence in him, called him at once from 
the victorious fields of the West to the Depart- 
ment of the Potomac, that Golgotha, where 
army after army, the very flower of the nation, 
had melted away. He came to the wilderness 
of Virginia, when that traitorous Commonwealth 
had become the rendezvous of the allied armies 
of rebellion, and when the rebel chiefs were 
boasting that in the fastnesses of the Blue Ridge 
they could defy the world in arms. He march- 
ed from Washington, and he measured no back- 
ward step until he had set his foot upon the 
shattered fragments of the greatest military 
power an invading army ever overthrew. He 
solved the problem which had baffled all others, 
and preserved a nationality after the world 
thought it had gone down. 

How stood he then? The nation leaned and 
reposed upon him, and blessed him. Both 
hemispheres gazed at him, as the prodigy and 
wonder of the age. 

The Democrats sought his consent to nomi- 
nate him for the Presidency without platform or 
pledge, but he declined. His integrity taught 
him that when a party chooses a candidate from 
the other side, somebody is to be cheated ; and 
by Giant's consent no one ever was or ever will 
lie cheated. 

But the Democratic managers ddored him, and 
saw him only resplendent with greatness and with 
virtues. He was not unfit for President then ; 



he was the fittest of all his countrymen. He did 
net become unfit until three years' experience 
had ripened and enlarged his knowledge. He 
did not become unfit while the patronage held 
out, and while unclean fingers were allowed to 
fumble it. 

In his recent modest letter of acceptance he 
says, "Experience may guide in avoiding mis- 
takes inevitable with novices in all professions 
and in all occupations." 

WHAT THE NEW YORK WORLD SAID. 

He was a "novice" when the New York 
World, then as now, the ablest opposition paper, 
said on the I ith of April, 1865 : 

Gen. Grant's history should leach us to discriminate 
better than we Americans are apt to do between glitter 
and solid work. Our proneness to run after demagogues 
and spouters may find a wholesome corrective in the 
study of such a character as his. The qualities by which 
great things are accomplished are here seen to have no 
necessary connection with showy and superficial accom- 
plishments. 

Ulysses S. Grant, the tanner, Ulysses S. Grant the 
unsuccessful applicant for the post of City Surveyor of 
St. Louis, Ulysses S. Grant, the driver into that city of 
his two-horse team, with a load of wood to sell, had 
within him every manly quality, which will cause the 
name of Lieut. -Gen. Grant to live forever in history. 
His career is a lesson in practical democracy — it is a quiet 
satire on the dandyism, the puppyism, and the shallow 
affectation of our fashionable exquisites, as well as 
upon the swagger of our plausible, glib-tongued dem- 
agogues. 

Apply to Gen. Grant what test you will ; measure him 
by the magnitude of the obstacles he has surmounted, 
by the value of the positions he has gained, by the fame 
of the antagonist over whom he has triumphed, by the 
achievements of his most illustrious co-workers, by the 
sureness with which he directs his idomitable energy t» 
the vital point which is the key of a vast field of opera- 
tions, or by that supreme test of consummate ability — the 
absolute completeness of his results — and he vindicates 
his claim to stand next after Napoleon and Wellington 
among the great soldiers of this country, if not on a level 
with the latter. 

WHAT HORACE GREELEY SAID. 

He was not quite a novice when Horace 
Greeley said these things : 

Grant and his policy deserve the very highest credit. 

The people of the United States know Gen. Grant — 
have known all about him since Donelson and Vicksburg 
— they do not know his slanderers, and do not care to 
know them. 

While asserting the right of every Republican to his 
untrammeled choice of a candidate for next President 
until a nomination is made, I venture to suggest that 
Gen. Grant will be far better qualified for that momen- 
tous trust in 1872 than he was in 1868. 

We are led by him who first taught our armies ta 
conquer in the West, and, subsequently, in the East also. 
Richmond would not come to us until we sent Grant 
after it, and then it had to come. He has never yet been 
defeated, and never will be. He will be as great and 
successful on the field of politics as on that of arms. 

Yes : Gen. Grant has failed to gratify some eager 
aspirations, and has thereby incurred some intense 
hatreds. These do not and will not fail, and his admin- 
istration will prove at least equally vital. We shall hear 
lamentation after lamentation over his failures from 
those whose wish is father to the thought : but the 
American people let them pass unheeded. Their strong 
arm bore him triumphantly through the war and into 
the White House, and they still uphold and sustain him : 
and they never failed and never will. 

He was not altogether a novice when, in Sep- 
tember, 1871, Mr. Greeley wrote, and sent to 
the Republican State Convention for adoption, 
these resolutions : 

II. In this alarming crisis in City and State affairs, the 
Republican party refers all good citizens to its record, as 



G 



The President and His Slanderers. 



their warrant for giving it their fullest confidence and 
support in the campaign, now formally opening, of the 
honest men against the thieves. 

ll ab ilishi a slavery. 

It led in the suppression of the rebellion. 

Ii | n served and enlarged the Union. 

It promptly reduced the enormous forces thus required 
lo a peace fa 

It li is redtlced the debt over two hundred and fifty 
millions of dollars in the last three years. 

It has simultaneously reduced public taxation over two 
hundred and fifty millions of dollars per annum. 

1 1 ii is preserved peace on the border. 

Ii lias w in a friendly adjustment of the threatening 
troubles with Great Britain. 

111. For its conspicuous share in this beneficent rec- 
er.i we endorse the Xatioiuil Republican Adminis- 
tration. 

These resolutions were written only a little 
while ago, ami all the slanders to this day in- 
vented against the President, had long been cur- 
rent then. 

"gift-taking." 

But let us go back a moment, to Grant, be- 
fore he seriously thought of being President, 
and when he was only the idol of the nation. 
Returning from the field, covered with glory, 
but poor in money, the affluent, whose fortunes 
he had saved, met him with munificent offerings. 
In this they followed the customs of ancient 
and modern times. 

The austere republics of antiquity enriched 
and ennobled their heroes returning from vic- 
tory. England, with an unwritten Constitution, 
and an omnipotent Parliament, which a lawyer 
•nee said " could do anything but make a man 
a woman," has enriched her Generals both by 
acts of Paxliament and by voluntarysubscriptions. 

In the United States, the Constitution does 
not permit Congress to act in such matters ; 
here they rest wholly in the voluntary action of 
individuals, and that public presentations to 
heroes involved turpitude in givers or recipi- 
ents, has been first found out by the spurious re- 
formers and libelers now clamoring for notice. 

Wellington received from his Government, 
and his neighbors, more than $3,000,000. 
British citizens of Calcutta made him presents, 
the officers of the army gave him $10,000, the 
House of Commons voted him $1,000,000, and a 
mansion and estate were purchased for him by 
subscription, at a cost of $1,300,000. Besides 
this, he was three times ennobled, twice by Eng- 
land, and once by Spain. 

Oliver Cromwell, for deeds done in civil war, 
received $32,500 a year in gifts. Marlborough 
was given a stately palace and a splendid for- 
tune. Nelson and his family were ennobled, 
and received $70,000. Jewels and money were 
given to Fairfax for services in civil war. 

The Generals and Admirals of England and 
France have generally been recipients of great 
pecuniary benefits. In England and elsewhere, 
the custom of presents to public men has gone 
beyond the army and the navy. Richard Cob- 
den, a civilian, in token of political service only, 
was t;iveii by subscription three hundred and 
fifty thousand dollars. Tohn Bright has just 
received costly gifts. 

America, younger and poorer, with few wars 

to breed heroes, has been less lavish than older 

, but Americans have not been stingy. 

Gen. McClellan, perhaps, begins the list of 



largely-rewarded Generals. His active service 
ended before the war was over, and his Demo- 
cratic admirers, prior to nominating him for the 
Presidency, presented him a costly house and 
a large purse, amounting in all to a hundred 
thousand dollars. 

To Sherman, Sheridan, Farragut and Grant 
large sums were given. To Stanton's family 
and to Rawlins's, were given more than a hun- 
dred thousand each. Were these things dishon- 
orable? Was it wrong for Gen. Grant to 
accept such gifts ? The charge is an insult to 
the nation who witnessed and applauded the 
proceeding ; it is an imputation upon those who 
gave, as much as upon him who received. It 
cannot have been dishonorable or improper for 
him to accept a gift, without being dishonorable 
and improper to offer it. 

How mean must the cant and snivel we hear 
seem to the people of Germany just now. Bis- 
marck, though Chancellor and Prime Minister, 
has just received as a gift, in token of his ser- 
vices in the recent war, a magnificent landed 
estate, worth more than was given to all our 
Generals ; and Bismarck, in like token, has 
been made a prince. Gen. Von Mokke, for his 
services in the German- Franco War, has been 
given $300,000 ; and Germany has set apart 
from the French indemnity fund, four million 
dollars, to be distributed in gifts to her heroes. 
Do you believe that any German, or any man 
with a German heart in his bosom, will ever be 
mean enough to throw these gifts in the face of 
those who earned and accepted them ? If there 
is a man mean enough to do it, he will be safer 
in the Greeley menagerie than he would be in 
any hiding place in Germany. 

Yet gift-taking, forsooth, is paraded by po- 
litical Pharisees. One thing is noticeable ; the 
men who screech about gift-taking are those 
who never gave a cent, and who were never 
openly offered a cent — certainly not for any hon- 
orable service rendered to their country. The 
charge that Grant accepted any gift after he be- 
came President, or after he was nominated, is 
wholly false. He has accepted nothing of value 
since his first nomination — not even a carriage 
and horses — although Lincoln, and Buchanan, 
and Pierce, and Taylor, andother Presidents, did 
accept carriages and horses after their election. 

"GIFT-BEARING GREEKS." 

But it is said that men who subscribed to gifts 
have been appointed to office, and the insinua- 
tion is that they were appointed because they 
subscribed to gifts. 

The fact that hundreds who gave have never 
been appointed to anything would of itself seem 
to disprove the charge that official patronage has 
been used to re-pay gifts. Only three — or at 
most four — contributors to the funds raised for 
Gen. Grant have ever been offered appointments, 
and it would seem far-fetched to explain the se- 
lection of three for a reason applying to more 
than three hundred who were never selected at 
all. But the facts answer the charge. 

MR. A. T. STEWART AND MR. BORIE. 

Mr. A.T. Stewart subscribed to the Grant fund; 

so did every leading man in the City of New 



Senator Conkling's Great Speech at JVeio York. 



York who then supported the war and the Re- 
publican Party. No man on Manhattan Island 
who would have been thought of for the Cabinet 
refused to subscribe. A man of wealth and 
prominence belonging to the Union party at that 
time, who had refused to share in an offering to 
a Union General, would have been as mean and 
as marked as a member of a church who should 
refuse to pay his part to the minister. The call 
was general, and for the wealthy who had sup- 
ported the war to give was a matter of course. 
When Gen. Grant became President, had he nam- 
ed for his Cabinet E. D. Morgan, George Op- 
dyke, Jackson S. Schultz, William E. Dodge, 
Henry Clews, or any other leading merchant or 
banker who supported him, it would have turned 
out that he too was a "gift-bearing Greek." 

The same thing is true of Mr. Borie, of Phila- 
delphia, the late Secretary of the navy ; the only 
difference being, that Mr. Stewart was willing to 
accept office, and Mr. Borie utterly refused andde- 
clinedit, consenting at last, under protest, to serve 
only for a short lime. These Cabinet Ministers 
wereselectedfortwo reasons: First, theirsupposed 
fitness, and second, becausetheywerenot "politi- 
cians." Mr. Stewart's success and mastership of 
the details of a vast and varied business convinced 
the President that he might render great services 
as Secretary of the Treasury. Mr. Borie, a retired 
merchant and importerand shipper andship-own- 
er, was believed to have large experience and 
knowledge applicable to the navy department. 

These facts by themselves might not have 
caused these two selections, because other men 
might have been found qualified, and at the 
same time known in political affairs. 

THE TRIBUNE AT THE BOTTOM OF IT. 

The New York Tribune, and the newspapers 
which followed it, or chimed in with it, had 
more to do than all else, with bringing about 
the nomination of Mr. Stewart and Mr. Borie, 
and of others unknown in public affairs. 

The Tribune had vociferated against "politi- 
cians"; it had conjured the President to avoid 
" politicians," and had proclaimed again and 
again that the country had a right to expect of 
Gen. Grant that "politicians" would not be put 
in high places, but that new men would be 
brought in. Listening to this hollow bluster, 
echoed in many public journals, the President 
was misled as to the popular judgment. 

His own wisdom taught him that if you want 
a lawyer you should select a man who has prov- 
ed himself a lawyer ; that if you want a doctor, 
you had better take one who has been tried; and 
so if you want an agent to manage public affairs, 
you had better take a man experienced in such 
affairs. But Mr. Greeley insisted that a Cabinet 
should be chosen upon the principle on which 
he is trying to be President, viz., passing over 
all the men whom you know to be fit, and tak- 
ing a man at a venture with no reason to believe 
him to be fit. Indeed, Mr. Greeley once told the 
President that, in his opinion, offices should 
never be given to those who could take care of 
themselves, but should be kept for those who 
couldn't make a living in any other way. Much 
has been said about President Grant's choice of 
his Cabinet, but those who know its inside his- 
tory know that the very men who are now hound- 



ing the President warmly approved of the persons, 
named, especially of Mr. Stewart. 

THE LAW AND THE TRUTH IN MR. STEW- 
ART'S CASE. 

The provisions of law making Mr. Stewart 
ineligible were as much out of the minds of 
others as of the President. 

Mr. Stewart was unanimously confirmed by 
the Senate, as were the other Cabinet nomina- 
tions now said to be so bad ; and yet there sat 
Sumner and Tipton, and Schurz and Trumbull, 
and the other new-light oracles, and appointed, 
because the President without the Senate could 
not appoint, A. T. Stewart and the rest. Sev- 
eral old statutes forbid importers to hold such 
places, and upon the President's attention being 
called to this, he submitted to the Senate a sug- 
gestion that the law be so changed as to allow 
Mr. Stewart to act as Secretary of the Treasury. 
When he reflected on the subject, however, the 
President did what no small man could have 
done. He saw the error ; he did not say the 
Senate was as much to blame as he was, or as 
ignorant as he was, or that the Senate, having 
confirmed Mr. Stewart, must reconsider its 
action or share the responsibility of getting out 
of the predicament ; but he took the whole 
blame himself. He said, " This is my mistake; 
I will correct it." He immediately withdrew 
his message recommending the law's repeal, 
and then he did the disagreeable duty of appri- 
sing Mr. Stewart that his proffered deed of 
trust, pronounced sufficient by certain Senators, 
now ranting "reformers," would not do, and 
that nothing would do except to resign and let 
another take the place. The President's man- 
liness in meeting everything and shirking 
nothing on this occasion, raised him greatly in 
the estimation of all just beholders. He offen- 
ded Mr. Stewart, and impaired his friendship, 
and yet the bald pretense is now made that 
he used official power to recompense a gift. 

MR. MOSES H. GRINNELL. 

Mr. Moses H. Grinned was a subscriber to the 
Grant fund. He was appointed Collector of 
New York, greatly to the satisfaction of Mr. 
Greeley and the motley crew which follows him. 
Did you ever hear that Grinnell's subscription 
was any objection to his appointment ? . When 
Mr. Grinnell resigned the Collectorship he be- 
came a Tribune martyr. He then asked the 
President for the Naval Office, and the President 
yielded to his request. Did you ever hear this 
objected to because Grinnell was a "gift-bear- 
ing Greek " ? When members of Congress and 
Senators from other States, Massachusetts for 
one, urged the President to appoint Mr. Lafiin 
Naval Officer, Mr. Grinnell was displaced, and 
then the very men who now prate about ap- 
pointing those who made presents, denounced 
the President for ingratitude to Grinnell, on the 
ground that Grinnell had subscribed money for 
the President. As Nasby would say, "sich is life." 

No man who knows President Grant, unless 
he be knave or fool, for a moment believes that 
the President ever dreamed of prostituting his of- 
fice to pay a debt of his own, or to bribe, or re- 
ward, or repay the givers of money to him. 



8 



The President and Ills Slanderers. 



THE PRESIDENT'S RICHES. 

The " Liberal " idea of decency and manly 
war, forces me to speak of another thing which 
will grate upon your ears. The political scav- 
engers pretend that the President has 
grown rich, as President, by illicit gain, and 
they parade his property by millions. We have 
fallen on sorry times, when the Chief Magistrate 
of the country, with a fame so great and pure, 
must give account of his private property in an- 
swer to electioneering falsehoods. The Presi- 
dent would disdain to do it ; I have no author- 
ity to do it ; 1 do not assume to do it on his 
behalf; but on behalf of the party and the 
cause he represents I venture to state the facts. 

At Galena, where he "tanned hides," he 
owned a house, and during the war he invested 
the savings from his pay in some lots in Chi- 
cago, and in some shares of street railway stock. 
Mrs. Grant inherited her share in her father's 
farm in Missouri, and they bought out the other 
heirs with a portion of the hundred thousand 
dollars presented by citizens of New York. 
This one hundred thousand dollars also paid 
for a house in Washington, which was subse- 
quently sold to Gen. Sherman, and a cottage 
and grounds were bought at Long Branch after 
the Washington house was sold. The people 
of Philadelphia presented a house, which rents 
for about two thousand dollars a year. This 
completes the property of the President, with 
one exception. 

Some years ago he purchased ten thousand 
dollars, in nominal value, of the stock of the Sen- 
eca Stone Company ; to this day it has paid 
nothing, partly because the President has inter- 
fered to prevent Seneca stone being adopted as 
building material for the Government. One of 
the plans submitted for the new State Depart- 
ment required the use of Seneca stone, and, be- 
cause of his being a stockholder, the President 
refused to allow the plan to be even considered. 
The other stockholders complained of this, say- 
ing they were punished because the President 
owned stock ; the President replied, expressing 
his regret, and saying that he would sell his 
stock or give it away, except for imputations cast 
upon him by political opponents because of his 
ownership ; but he deemed it unsuitable even to 
seem to defer to such calumny by parting with 
his stock. 

Here, then, is the sum total of the President's 
possessions ; and they embrace no cigars smug- 
gled in the dispatch bag, no costly works of art 
or rare wines bestowed by foreigners, no testi- 
monials sent from other lands, in gratitude for 
efforts to tarnish the fair fame of his country. 
Every dollar he owns came from sources open 
as the day, and every month of his Presidency 
has made him poorer than the month before ; 
and yet the country and Congress are disgraced 
by inuendoes and poisonous hints that vast wealth 
has been amassed in the Presidential office. ■• 

GRANT NO MONEY-MAKER AND NO OFFICE- 
SEEKER. 

Had wealth gained in office been Grant's aim, 
he would never have been President. As General 
of the Army he stood the foremost man of all 
the earth. His pay was for'life, and was nearly, 



if not quite, as great annually as the Presidential 
salary. In money value and money-making 
opportunity, as well as in ease and freedom, his 
position then was unmeasurably better than the 
Presidency for four years or eight. We know 
the Presidency sought him, and not he the 
Presidency ; but had avarice been his thought, 
he would have refused the Presidency, and 
kept the life-place of General. 

The Presidential salary has not lured him now. 
We hear of " his pretentions," and of his "in- 
sisting upon being a candidate"; yet, first and 
last, he never made himself a candidate, and 
never, to my knowledge, has he expressed a 
wish to be re-elected. So far from it, that for 
more than a year his friends were uneasy with 
solicitude lest he should withhold absolutely the 
use of his name. 

In place of dividing or hazarding the Repub- 
lican Party by seeking a renomination, he never 
consented to stand a second time until he was 
assured on every hand that the party demanded 
him as the only man who could not be beaten ; 
and my firm conviction is, that, had no asper- 
sion been cast upon him, he would personally 
gladly be mustered out. 

More than a year ago, expressing to me pri- 
vately his earnest wish to leave public toil, he 
said that at West Point he counted the days, 
the hours, and even the minutes to elapse, be- 
fore he should be graduated, and that, with a 
like eagerness, he counted the time that would 
complete his Presidential service ; and often, 
before vindictive injustice had roused him to 
resistance, those who knew him best, and among 
them the ablest and purest members of the 
Senate, continually expressed solicitude lest he 
should refuse to run again, and leave the party 
distracted by rivalries, and with no candidate 
so strong. 

But when the shower of mud, and the beating 
of gongs, and the foul-mouthed uproar burst 
upon him, all felt that we were safe. Grant never 
scares well at all, and is never driven when 
courage can make a stand ; and the two debts 
the Republican party owes to the deserters who 
have attempted to betray it are, first, that they 
cleansed and reformed the party by leaving it ; 
and second, that they have insured it a candidate 
who, in the words of Horace Greeley, "never 
has been defeated and never will be." 

The assaults made upon him at once swelled 
the tide in his favor, and the determination to 
renominate him soon became obvious even to 
those who hated most to see it. 

Then came the next effort to throw dust in tne 
people's eyes. The New York Tribune, and 
other journals, which for a year had been doing 
the worse than menial offices of the Democratic 
party, raised a yell that "the office-holders were 
going to renominate Grant." This bald tale 
had its run until the Philadelphia Convention 
met. It then turned out that, among seven hun- 
dred and fifty delegates, there were not thirty 
office-holders, a thing unexampled in American 
politics. No National Convention of the party in 
power ever met before, in which men holding offi- 
cial station were not largely present. Perhaps no 
single precinct in the whole country so effectu- 
ally gave the lie to the pretense that the office- 



Senator Conklhu/\s ^Great^Spcech at New York. 



9 



holders controlled the people, as the Seventh 
Ward of the City of Boston, the ward in which 
Mr. Sumner lives. There, under his own vine 
and fig tree, where he carefully superintended 
the selection of "office-holders," the primary 
meeting brought out unusual numbers ; the Re- 
publicans turned out en masse and voted unani- 
mously for Grant. Mr. Sumner, in his opposi- 
tion, could not command a vote. 

THE PHILADELPHIA CONVENTION — HENRY 
WILSON. 

The roll-call in the National Convention was 
answered by a chorus of States, and with a 
unanimity and a spirit which made the Conven- 
tion the most remarkable ever held, and the in- 
dorsement the most flattering and pronounced 
ever given to a candidate. The announced wish 
of Mr. Colfax to withdraw from public life, left 
the Convention without unity of sentiment as to 
the second place on the ticket ; and the choice 
fell upon the man whom Mr. Wade has well 
described "as the incarnation of American citi- 
zenship." 

Born a child of poverty and toil, the Natick 
Cobbler, during a long life of purity and public 
service, had won a place in the respect and good 
will of his countrymen which made it fit that the 
second office in the Republic should be held by 
Henry Wilson. Without the contrast between 
his colleague and himself, the prize might not 
have fallen to him. But the inexcusable con- 
duct of Mr. Sumner led the Convention to pre- 
fer Mr. Wilson for Vice-President, for his own 
great merit, and also because his nomination 
would record a national judgment against the 
pretention that the party belongs to any man, or 
is subject to the whim or dictation of any knot 
of men, however petted in the past. Mr. Wil- 
son has been a Senator many years, a Senator 
during Gen. Grant's whole military and civil ser- 
vice. He has at all times upheld Republican 
measures, and therefore is answerable, as he 
wishes to be, for the acts of the party and the 
policy of the Administration. The objections 
to either candidate apply to both, and can be 
argued together. 

The Administration is on trial. Charges are 
made against it, and the Republican ticket de- 
serves defeat unless these charges, as far as they 
are worthy of notice, can be fully met. If such 
charges were ever canvassed before in a Presi- 
dential election, they were used as make-weights 
to go with other and very different things. 
Never before were such charges alone the theme 
of popular consideration. 

WASHINGTON AND OTHERS SLANDERED. 

Never before did a political party plant itself 
upon personalities and scandal, and upon noth- 
ing else. George Washington was visited with 
loathsome abuse by his political opponents. 
During the pendency of Jay's treaty, to which 
Washington was earnestly devoted, Chief Justice 
Marshall informs us that Washington's 
— " military and political character was attacked with 
equal violence, and it was averred that he was totally 
destitute of merit, either as a soldier or a statesman. 
The calumnies with which he was assailed were not 
confined to his political conduct : even his qualities as a 
man were the subjects of detraction. That he had vio- 
lated the Constitution in negotiating a treaty without the 



previous advice of the Senate, and in embracing in that 
treaty subjects belonging exclusively to the Legislature, 
was openly maintained, for which an impeachment was 
publicly suggested ; and that he had drawn from the 
Treasury for his private use more than the salary an- ( 
nexed to his office, was asserted without a 'blush. This 
last allegation was said to be supported by extracts from 
the Treasury accounts, which had been laid before the 
Legislature, and was maintained with the most unblush- 
ing effrontery. Though the Secretary of the Treasury 
denied that the appropriation made by the Legislature 
had been exceeded, the atrocious charge was still confi- 
dently reported, and the few who could triumph in any 
spot which might tarnish the lustre of Washington's fame 
felicitated themselves in the prospect of obtaining a 
victory over the reputation of a patriot, to whose single 
I hey ascribed the failure of their political plans. 
—Marshall's Life oj 'Washington, Vel. /, page 267. 

1 )o you discover any likeness here ? Is there 
in the revolting ugliness of these attempts to 
blacken Washington's name anything to remind 
you of what is going on around us now ? Jack- 
son was brutally defamed, and even charged in 
a public print with the paternity of colored bas- 
tards. The Convention which nominated Polk 
hung but from the balcony a full length daub of 
Henry Clay, bespattered with blood, holding a 
pistol in one hand and a pack of cards in theother. 
These were revolting brutalities indeed, but 
there is one marked difference between the scan- 
dals hurled at Washington, Jackson, Buchanan, 
Lincoln and others, ami those now flung at Grant. 
The public measures, the political policy of 
these other Presidents, was in each case opposed 
and criticised, and the sting of personal calumny 
was used as a spur to the main contest. Now, 
personal abuse is the Alpha and Omega on one 
side. John Quincy Adams was besmeared with 
rancorous aspersion on account of his appoint- 
ments to office, as his father had been for appoint- 
ing relatives to office, but the issue at the same 
time was always made upon grave political ques- 
tions. 

What political policy of Grant or his Admin- 
istration does the opposition assail ? What part 
of the present policy do they propose to reverse 
or alter ? What part dare they avow or admit 
they mean to change? Lay your finger on it if 
you can. Hard words you can find, vague, 
cloudy, sweeping denunciations ; but take up, 
one by one, the important positions and meas- 
ures of the Administration, and except the San 
Domingo Treaty, if that be an exception, where 
is the specific thing upon which issue is made? 
Let me state the case in another form. Sup- 
pose all the slurs and flings and vile gossip 
against Grant are true— suppose you admit the 
whole of them — what do they signify ? Suppose 
he has appointed a dozen relatives to office; 
suppose he has failed to appreciate the claims of 
certain politicians ; suppose presents had been 
given him after he was President ; suppose the 
idea of making A. T. Stewart Secretary of the 
Treasury was as foolish as every reformer says it 
was now ; suppose there was no express law 
authorizing two young military friends to write 
in his office and carry his messages. Put it to- 
gether, and what of it ? 

If you want a man to pilot a ship, or lead an 
army, or try a cause, or build a house, or set a 
broken arm, or run a locomotive, what do you 
care so long as he does his work well, whether he 
is too fond ol his relations, or doesn't like certain 
politicians, or has subjected himself to envious 



10 



The President and Ills Slanderers. 



sneers by having presents given to him? All 
these things are aside from the purpose. "They 
are tithing, mint, anise and cummin." Has he 
made a good President ? That is the question. 

SAN DOMINGO. 

Let us examine the evidence ; and, first of all, 
let us take up the charges and evidence against 
him. The San Domingo treaty, unlike going 
to Long Branch, or smoking a cigar, or riding 
in a palace-car, was a matter of public business, 
and is, therefore, a topic not despicable or un- 
worthy. His guilt and his innocence in this 
respect can all be briefly stated. 

The Monroe doctrine is one of the traditions 
of the country, and of both political parties. 
The Monroe doctrine means opposition to ac- 
quisitions on this continent by European Powers. 
When President Grant came in no such question 
was pending, but such a question soon arose. 
An agent from the Dominican Republic pre- 
sented himself to the President, saying that the 
people of Dominica, few in numbers, but rich 
in one of the most fertile isles of any sea, lying 
close to our shores, waited to come under the 
American flag ; and, that failing to do so, they 
would look to a European alliance. The Pres- 
ident made no reply, and afterward a second 
envoy appeared repeating these statements, with 
glowing accounts of the fertility and resources 
«f the Island of San Domingo. 

Gen. McClellan, Admiral Porter, Commis- 
sioner Hogan, and others, had previously ex- 
amined and reported upon the island, and had 
strongly stated its advantages as a coaling sta- 
tion, a naval station, a military key to the Gulf 
of Mexico, and as an area prolific in coffee, 
sugar-cane, rice, dye-stuffs, mahogany, and other 
valuable woods, and in other products of the 
tropics, besides iron, copper, gold and salt. 

With this information before him, the Presi- 
dent could not turn a deaf ear and a closed eye 
to so grave a matter. He caused two or three 
discreet persons to go, unexpected and unob- 
served, to San Domingo, learn all they could, 
and make report. This being done, the Presi- 
dent was convinced that the matter should be 
entertained, put in the form of a treaty, and 
submitted to the judgment of the Senate and 
the country. 

THE PRESIDENT CALLS ON MR. SUMNER — A 
QUESTION OF VERACITY. 

A treaty was proposed and reduced to writ- 
ing, and the President, with none of the "pre- 
tention" which Mr. Sumner imagines, paid Mr. 
Sumner the deference of going to his house, in 
place of sending for him to confer with him as 
Chairman of the Committee of Foreign Rela- 
tions, and to ascertain whether he favored the 
treaty, and would support it. The interview 
took place in the presence of two witnesses, 
Gen. Babcock and Col. John \V. Forney. 

These two witnesses, in addition to the Pres- 
ident, affirm that Mr. Sumner distinctly de- 
clared himself in favo.'of the treaty, and stated 
that he should support it. 

Col. Forney testifies as follows : 

I was present at Mr. Sumner's residence when Presi- 
dent Grant called and explained the Dominican treaty 



to the Senator, and, although I cannot recall the exact 
words of the latter, / understood him to say tliat he 
■would most cheerfully support the treaty. At the Pres- 
ident's request, 1 remained to hear his explanation, and 
am free to add, that such is my deep regard /or Air. 
Sumner, that his endorsement of the treaty went very 
far to stimulate me in giving it my own support. I 
have already said this much to Mr. Sumner, who, hmv- 
ever, claims that other information since obtained has 
shaped his present action. 

(Signed) J. W. FORNEY. 

This statement is true, or it is wilfully false ; 
because although P'orney might have misunder- 
stood Mr. Sumner at the time, he cannot be mis- 
taken in the fact that Mr. Sumner afterward 
admitted that he had changed his mind. Gen. 
Babcock certifies in writing that after the inter- 
view with the President, he and Mr. Sumner 
read and examined the treaty carefully together; 
and that at the close of the interview, Mr. Sum- 
ner said, " That he could not think of doing 
otherwise than supporting the Administration in 
the matter"; and further, " that there was no ob- 
jection to the instrument as a whole." 

Yet Mr. Sumner, having meanwhile taken 
offense because his views and wishes in other 
matters were not deferred to, became incensed 
at the President and Mr. Fish, denounced them, 
and among other things the San Domingo 
treaty, and raising an issue of veracity with 
three witnesses, denied that he ever intimated 
that he would give the treaty his support. 

His version of the interview with the President 
is, that the President came to his house and was 
proceeding to unfold the San Domingo matter, 
when he (Sumner) broke in with the subject of 
an appointment in which he was interested ; and 
that when the President returned to the treaty, 
he (Sumner) evaded the point altogether by a 
studied ambiguity. Here are Mr. Sumner's 
words, delivered to the Senate : "He (the Presi- 
dent) proceeded with an explanation which I 
very soon interrupted, saying, 'by the way, Mr. 
President, it is very hard to turn out Gov. Ash- 
ley ; I have just received a letter from the Gov- 
ernor, and I hope I shall not take too great a 
liberty, Mr. President, if I read it. I find it 
excellent and eloquent, and written with a feel- 
ing which interests me much.' I commenced 
the letter and read two pages or more, when I 
thought the President was uneasy, and I felt 
that I was taking too great a liberty with him in 
my own house, but I was irresistibly impelled by 
loyalty to an absent friend, while I was glad of 
this opportunity of diverting attention from the 
treaty. As conversation about Gov. Ashley 
subsided, the President returned to the treaty, 
leaving on my mind no very strong idea of what 
they proposed, and nothing with regard to the 
character of the negotiations. My reply was 
precise. The language is fixed absolutely in my 
memory : 

" ' Mr. President,' I said, 'lam m Administration 
man, and whatever you do, will always find in me the 
most careful and candid consideration.' . 
My language, I repeat, was precise, well considered, and 
chosen in advance : ' I am an Administration man, and 
whatever you do will always find in me the most careful 
and candid consideration.' " 

Mr. Sumner did not deny that the President 
acted upon the belief that heapproved the treaty, 
nor did he deny that he left the President so to 
act, without ever informing him that he had 



Senator Conklintfs Great Speech at Nexo York. 



11 



changed his mind, or been misunderstood. Yet 
Mr. Sumner in the Senate assailed the President 
personally and bitterly ; and in a published in- 
terview in Chicago with Major Chamberlain, a 
man of character and veracity, who had been a 
Union officer, and was then connected with the 
Press, Mr. Sumner charged the 1 'resident with 
venality and jobbery in the San Domingo Treaty. 

In consequence of these and other like occur- 
rences, it was proposed to send three Commis- 
sioners to San Domingo, at no cost beyond their 
expenses, to investigate and clear up the whole 
matter, and to ascertain whether, as Mr. Sum- 
ner had charged, lots in San Domingo had been 
staked off and marked with the names of the 
President and others. 

The inquiry seemed fair to most of those who 
opposed and to those who favored the treaty, 
but Mr. Sumner resisted the inquiry inch by 
inch, and after a majority of the Foreign Rela- 
tions Committee had joined him in denouncing 
it, he insisted that it should be referred to that 
Committee. 

The same familiar parliamentary maxim 
about putting a " child to nurse with those who 
care not for it," upon which he rung the changes 
so often in the French Arms affair, was quoted 
to him in vain. When the sale of arms was to 
be inquired into, Mr. Sumner slandered the 
Senate for appointing a committee all in favor 
of investigating, because the committee was not 
biased in favor of convicting somebody, but the 
San Domingo inquiry he insisted should go to 
a committee of which a majority had declared 
in advance against any inquiry at all. 

At the end of a protracted and stubborn con- 
test, Congress authorized a Commission to be 
sent ; not, however, till Mr. Sumner had de- 
nounced the President for not taking it upon 
himself, of his own authority, to send a Com- 
mission without asking permission of Congress. 
Now we hear from Mr. Sumner, not that the 
President shrinks from his prerogatives, but 
that he arrogantly oversteps them. 

Mr. Wade, Dr. Howe of Boston, and Pres- 
ident Andrew D. White were selected as Com- 
missioners. They visited San Domingo, and 
made a report which few of the American peo- 
ple have read, but which will be read when the 
din and passion of to-day are forgotten. The 
report explodes utterly every calumnious pre- 
tense, and presents a statement which leaves no 
room to doubt the duty of the President to con- 
sider as he did the acquisition of San Domingo, 
and to urge it upon the attention of the Senate 
and the country. 

HOW THE PRESIDENT SHAMED HIS AC- 
CUSERS. 

In transmitting this report to Congress the 
President did his last act in the matter. With 
the report he sent a Message, to which a Minis- 
ter from one of the first Powers of the earth told 
me he called the attention of his Government, 
as one of the most remarkable State papers of 
which he had knowledge. In that Message 
stand these words : 

" The mere rejection by the Senate of a treaty nego- 
tiated by the President, only indicates a difference of 
opinion between two co-ordinate departments of the Gov- 
ernment, without touching the character or wounding 



the pride of cither. Rut when such rejection I 
simultaneously with the charges, openly made, o! cor- 
ruption on the part of the President, or those employed 
by him, the case is different In llich case the l 
the nation demands investigation. This has been accom- 
plished by the report of the Commissioners herewith 
transmitted, and which fully vindicates the purity of the 

motives and ai tion of those who represented the United 
States in the negotiation. And now my task i : 
an. I with it ends all personal solicitude upon the subject. 
" My duty being .'one, yours begin* : and 1 gladly 
hand over the whole matter to the judgment of the 
American people, and of their Representative, in Con- 
gress assembled. The facts will now be spreacrbefore 
the country, and a decision rendered by that tribunal 
whose convictions so seldom err, and against 
whose will I have no policy to enforce. M y opinion re- 
mains unchanged ; indeed, it is confirmed by the report 
that the interests of our country and San Domingo alike 
invite the annexation of that Republic. In view of the 
difference of opinion upon this subject, I suggest that no 
action be taken at the present session beyond the print- 
ing and general dissemination of the report. Before the 
next session of Congress the people will have considered 
the subject, and formed an intelligent opinion concerning 
it, to which opinion, deliberately made up, it will be the 
duty of every department of the Government to give heed, 
and no one will more cheerfully conform to it than 
myself. " 

This was the utterance last year of the man 
whom we are told is swollen with " pretension " 
and "ungovernable personality." 

Among the glaring absurdities heaped upon 
the San Domingo matter is the allegation that 
the war was made upon the Republic of Hayti. 
The foundation for this is that a vessel or two 
cruised in that part of the ocean during the ne- 
gotiations. Not a gun was fired, nor a pocket- 
pistol, nor a percussion cap, and the only war- 
like demonstration ever heard of was that a sea- 
captain sent up a sky-rocket from the deck of 
his vessel. The purpose of this sky-rocket, or 
where the stick came down, has never been 
ascertained. 

This, in brief, is the story of the San Domin- 
go affair. I do not refer to it to champion the 
treaty or argue its merits ; that is another mat- 
ter. My purpose is to show you that the part 
acted by the President was the part of an hon- 
est, modest man, walking in the path of the 
Constitution and of his predecessors. 

Previous Administrations had eagerly sought 
a foothold in the West Indies. A naval station 
and a harbor there have long been deemed an 
urgent necessity. Andrew Johnson and Gov. 
Seward made a treaty agreeing to pay Denmark 
seven millions and a half in gold for the Island 
of St. Thomas. The principal production of 
St. Thomas is earthquakes, and the Senate re- 
fused to buy earthquakes at the price agreed 
upon ; but it is not known that Mr. Sumner or 
anybody else denounced the making of the 
treaty. 

Andrew Johnson and Gov. Seward made a 
treaty with Russia, agreeing to pay seven mil- 
lions and a quarter for Alaska, in gold. No- 
body was ever sent to examine Alaska. When 
the treaty was made we had never looked upon 
a man who had set foot upon it ; we had heard 
of its icebergs and floods, and it seemed a white 
elephant ; but the Senate agreed to the treaty. 
The Chairman of Foreign Relations changed 
his mind on that treaty also. He started against 
it, but, touched by the master hand of the sage 
of Auburn, he suddenly turned and made a 
glowing speech in its behalf. The speech, 



12 



The President and His Slanderers. 



bound in Turkey morocco, was sent to the 
crowned heads of Europe, and its author sits in 
a picture, with the Russian Minister and Secre- 
tary of State, consigned to immortality by the 
pencil of Leutze. 

Franklin Pierce, with the whole Democracy 
at his back, attempted to force Spain to cede 
Cuba to us. Pierre Soule was sent out as Min- 
ister to Spain, and on his way stopped in the 
city of New York. There he was serenaded 
by the Order of the Lone Star, a band of avow- 
ed Cuban filibusters, and, addressing the crowd 
in the street, he declared that Cuba should be 
"torn from the old Spanish Wolf." 

In the face of this outrage and affront to a 
friendly power, President Pierce suffered Soule 
to sail for Spain ; he proceeded to Aix-la-Cha- 
pelle, and there Soule, James Buchanan, John 
V . Mason and August Belmont, all American 
Ministers to foreign countries, sat down and 
signed the Ostend Manifesto. This paper, 
caught up and endorsed by the whole Demo- 
cratic party, argued the imperative necessity for 
self-defense of a foothold in the West Indies, 
and, upon the plea of necessity, stated without 
a blush the Rob-Roy doctrine that might makes 
right, and avowed that if Spain would not sell 
Cuba it should be taken by force. 

After all these things, the same men who 
justified them denounce as monstrous the idea 
of paying one million and a half for a territory 
next our own shores, with one of the finest har- 
bors in the world, with an area as large as 
Connecticut, Vermont and Massachusetts, with 
a soil and climate better than Cuba, and 
with only a handful of people. We pay Cuba 
$58,000,000 a year for products of slave labor. 
We buy nearly all the slave-raised coffee of Bra- 
zil ; and here is an island on which would grow 
all that Cuba and Brazil send here ; and a Presi- 
dent is denounced as knave and fool for submit- 
ting to the people its purchase for one and a 
half million dollars ! 

The scheme may be unwise ; upon that ques- 
tion 1 wait for further light and better judgment; 
but the public sense will never run so mad as 
to crucify a public servant for submitting it to 
the wisdom of the people. 

"REMOVAL" OF MR. SUMNER. 

It may not be amiss here to allude to the effort 
to rouse indignation over the so-called "removal" 
of Mi. Sumner from the Committee of Foreign 
Relations. Mr. Sumner was never "removed" 
at all. All Senate committees die at the end 
of each session. All Senate committees are 
created anew at the beginning of each session. 
Mr. Sumner had been selected repeatedly for 
the l 'hairmanship of the Committee referred to, 
and the question was always, looking over the 
whole Senate, who would be the most useful, 
and, all things considered, the best man for the 
place. At the time in question, and for rea- 
sons easily stated, the Senate thought it would 
not be wise to select Mr. Sumner again for that 
Committee, and he was selected for another. 
This was not done because Mr. Sumner op- 
posed San Domingo, nor because he changed 
sides upon that question, nor because the Presi- 
dent or the Secretary of State wanted, or did 



not want, Mr. Sumner on this committee or on 
that. The reasons were wholly different. 
They were reasons of the Senate alone, and 
reasons which have governed the formation of 
parliamentary committees everywhere since such 
committees were known. The Committee on 
Foreign Affairs, in either House of Congress, 
ought not only, like other committees, to re- 
present the majority of the body, but, for pe- 
culiar reasons, it must be composed of men who 
can and will consult freely with the President, 
the Secretary of State, and their assistants. 
This is especially tme of the Chairman, he be- 
ing the organ of the Committee. 

Mr. Sumner not only wielded his position 
as Chairman in opposition to the majority of 
the Senate upon several important questions, 
and boasted in the Senate that the Committee 
could not be changed, but his conduct and lan- 
guage in public and in private had rendered it 
impossible for him to hold communication with 
those whom it was indispensable to confer with, 
and impossible for them to confer with him. 

Men cannot do business conveniently with 
those whom they denounce and insult continu- 
ally, nor with those toward whom they assume 
offensive superiority ; and the time came, with 
Mr. Sumner, as Chairman, when the Senate 
was left in ignorance, and business delayed for 
weeks, for lack of information from the State 
Department, merely because Mr. Sumner did 
not hold communication with it. The simple, 
indeed the only, cure for all this, was to select 
another Chairman. This was done, and nothing 
more j and it turned out that treaties, six or 
seven in number, having long lain buried in the 
Committee, after the change of Chairman were 
at once brought up and ratified. 

Yet this action of the Senate in managing and 
expediting its own business, has been made a 
grave matter for public consideration, and thrust 
at the President, who had no more to do with 
it than the Senate has to do with deciding 
how many vegetables the President has on his 
table. 

I leave this matter after asking one question. 
Is there one man on this continent, except Mr. 
Sumner, who could with propriety have clung 
to a position after his associates who conferred 
it were unwilling he should retain it ; is there 
one other man who would have supposed that 
his being on this committee or on that, would 
"jar the harmony of the universe " ? 

"nepotism." 

Let me go on with the charges against the 
President. Few of them figure more largely 
than appointing relatives to offic-e. Mr. Sumner 
has staggered the nation by the weight of the 
dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other big books 
which he has dumped upon us, to show what 
" nepotism " is. He finds it charged that Popes 
had Nephews, and lavished upon them the 
moneys of the church ; and he thinks that where 
a public office is to be filled, and a good man is 
appointed at the same pay any other man would 
receive, a case has occurred like that of the Popes, 
provided the man who makes the appointment, 
and the man wdio gets it, are related to each other. 
This, if not a useful, is a wonderful discovery. 



Senator Conklin^s Great Speech at New York. 



13 



From the morning of time, common sense lias 
distinguished between creating a useless and lu- 
crative sinecure and bestowing it on a relative, 
and selecting a relative to do a service required 
to be done. When Hannibal and Frederick the 
<ireat and Napoleon and Emperor William put 
a brother or a son at the head of an army with 
rank and titles, or even placed him on a throne, 
the world never thought it was like a sinecure 
for a Papal nephew. 

On the contrary, in public and in private busi- 
ness, nothing has seemed more natural than for 
those intrusted with affairs to employ and asso- 
ciate with themselves persons m whom they 
most confided, whether relatives or not. In all 
such cases, if the person be fit, little harm can 
be done ; but if he is unfit, a great wrong is done 
whether he be a relative or not. If the appoint- 
ment of relatives be a crime, a great many men, 
including the busiest and most blatant " Liber- 
ails," must be great criminals. Andrew Johnson, 
his Cabinet and chief officers, must have been 
huge offenders, for reasons which no one thought 
of at the time, though everybody knew of them. 

President Johnson's son was his chief Private 
Secretary. Gov. Seward's son was Assistant 
Secretary of State. Edwin M. Stanton's son 
was a Clerk in the War Department. Gideon 
Welles's son was Chief Clerk of the Navy De- 
partment ; and when Gideon Welles employed a 
relative at a great remuneration to buy ships, 
the scandal was not that he paid just sums to a 
relative, but that he paid such sums at all. 
Reverdy Johnson, Minister to England, made 
his son Assistant Secretary of Legation. John 
A. Dix, Minister to France, did the same thing 
with his son. All this was under Andrew John- 
son, but when a drag net of criticism and im- 
peachment was cast over him these things were 
not caught up. 

"liberal" relatives. 

The rueful " Reformers " themselves will not 
bear examination on this point. Mr. Schurz 
pressed his brother-in-law upon the President, 
and obtained for him a lucrative office, and 
when Mr. Trumbull caused his removal up- 
on statements impeaching his fitness, Mr. 
Schurz raged against the President for remov- 
ing his brother-in-law. Mr. Trumbull seems 
to have procured appointments for his brother- 
in-law, his sons, and his nephews, and he broke, 
it his said, with the President because he re- 
fused to appoint Mr. Trumbull's son to an office. 
That shrill and frisky "Reformer," Mr. Tipton, 
although not collossal himself, would need a 
hay-scales to be weighed along with ail his re- 
latives he has helped to get office. Three 
brothers-in-law, a nephew, and a son, in office, 
with other things for other relatives, did not 
satisfy his "liberal" inclinations; but he vig- 
orously plied the President and the Secretary of 
State to give a valuable consulship to another 
sbn, and after they declined he frequently avow- 
ed, once pipingly to the President himself, that 
the refusal was the cause of his opposition. 

Mr. Fenton saw no objection to giving his 
adopted son his influence for an office, nor to 
obtaining it from Tammany Hall, and keeping 
it through all the exposures of Tweed and the 



rest, although no service was attached to it equiv- 
alent to the pay. 

Mr. Sumner, with a brother-in-law in office 
under Andrew Johnson, was inflamed by his ic- 
moval, and did not hesitate to make known his 
displeasure. 

Even Mr. Greeley did not scruple to counte- 
nance his brother-in-law in obtaining the most 
lucrative collectorship of internal revenue in the 
United States. Nor has he hesitated to urge ap- 
pointments clearly unfit, on the ground of the 
intimate terms between himself and those he 
urged. 

DEMOCRATIC RELATIVES — GOV. HOFFMAN. 

Old-line Democrats are as weak as the new 
and buzzing converts in regard to relatives. 
Kentucky is the best example of a Democratic 
State Government, pure and simple. She has 
a Democratic Governor, Treasurer, Adjutant- 
General, Attorney-General, Clerk of the Court 
of Appeals, Auditor, and keeper of the Peniten- 
tiary, and of these, there is not one free from 
appointing relatives to office, and the same thing 
is true in numerous instances of members of the 
Kentucky Legislature. 

The City of New York, with its unmitigated 
Democratic government, is prolific beyond meas- 
ure in similar things. The Governor of New 
York, having turned "reformer," must be con- 
sidered high autherty. When Gov. Hoffman 
was Mayor, his father-in-law, Henry Stark- 
weather, was appointed, May i, 1867, Collector 
of "Assessments." In form, the appointment 
was made by Street Commissioner McLean, but 
McLean was appointed by Hoffman. Tweed 
succeeded McLean, but Starkweather was con- 
tinued by Tweed, and never relinquished his 
place till the Spring of 1872. Up to Jul), 1871, 
being four years and two months, Starkweather 
received in this office $560,824.59, as appeared 
on the books of the office, Feb. 27, 1872. This 
great sum was received undet the influence of 
Hoffman by his father-in-law, and Hoffman's 
wife is his father-in-law's only child. This 
makes the arrangement a closer and snugger 
thing than can be found even in Sumner's history 
of the Popes. 

How far such a sum could fitly be taken by 
Starkweather, appears from a report made on 
the 4th of March, 1872, to the Board of Assist- 
ant Alderman, by its Committee of Finance ; 
the report is signed by Charles P. Hartt and 
Charles C. Pinckney, and relates to the Collec- 
tor of Assessments and his fees. I read from 
the report these words : 

Your Committee find that the entire duties of the Bu- 
reau are performed by the Collector of Assessments and 
four or five employees : that these employees receive 
compensation out of the fees of the office to the extent 
of about $11,000 per annum, and that the remainder of 
said fees is divided between the Collector and such Dep- 
uty Collectors as are from time to time appointed ; tliese 
Deputy Collectors, hoivrver, perform no ivork, and ren- 
der no assistance whatever to the Collector in the duties 
of the Bureau. 

Again the report says : 

If the Collector can, with credit to himself, manage 
the affairs of his bureau by the annual expenditure for 
clerk hire of $11,000. it must be evident that there can 
exist no necessity whatever for its maintenance under its 
present management, at an annual cost of more thaja 



14 



The President and His Slanderers. 



$130,000. Its office accommodation, books stationery, 
safes, furniture, etc., etc., are all borne by the city. 

Among the worthy and needy provided for 
by Mr. Starkweather, was Win. M. Tweed, 
who received for nothing §101,978. 17. 

Did you ever hear this reeking and festering 
job talked about by the men or the papers now 
shrieking about "nepotism?" While Governor 
Hoffman was "Mayor his Chief Clerk was his 
brother-in-law, who at the same time was also 
clerk of the Street Cleaning Commission of which 
Hoffman was Chairman, thus holding two offices 
under his brother-in-law, and at the same time 
another relative of the Governor's held office at 
his hands. 

RELATIVES OF THE PRESIDENT. 

But if Gen. Grant has done wrong, the crime 
of others can not help him. Let us look into 
his case. You might suppose from the noise, 
that he had used a relative as a peg for every 
hole in the country, and that he had put round 
pegs in square holes, and square pegs in round 
holes, everywhere. It has been said that he has 
appointed fifty relatives, forty relatives, thirty 
relatives, and Mr. Sumner estimates thirteen 
relatives, to office. None of these statements 
are true. Since President Grant came in, but 
nine persons in all, connected in the remotest 
degree with him or with his wife, have held po- 
litical office under the United States. 

I have a list of them, and do not speak with- 
out information. Nine is the total number in 
political office. This does not include a son of 
the President sent as a pupil to West Point long 
before his father became President ; nor does it 
include his brother-in-law, Dent, who has long 
held a commission in the army by the same ten- 
ure under which Sherman and Sheridan, and 
every other officer of the army holds his place, 
and which the President has no more power to 
give or take away than the man in the moon. 

Of the nine relatives or connections in office 
two were appointed by Andrew Johnson, viz : 
the President's father, Postmaster at Covington, 
Ky., and his brother-in-law, the Rev. Mr. Cra- 
mer, Consul at Leipsic. Mr. Cramer was trans- 
ferred from Leipsic to Denmark by President 
Grant, on the recommendation of Bishop Simp- 
son, Bishop Jayne, and many other well-known 
persons, friends of Mr. Cramer. Being the 
brother-in-law of the President, he of course be- 
came a mark for "Liberal" abuse, and was 
charged with drinking beer and being refused 
membership of a social club. 

But now comes the Cincinnati Methodist Con- 
ference, about as respectable a body as has met 
in Cincinnati lately, and certifies, after full in- 
vestigation, the utter falsity of the charges. 
Their report is fortified by letters from Copenha- 
gen, and by statements of the official journal and 
other newspapers there, indignantly repelling the 
aspersions cast at Mr. Cramer, and pronouncing 
htm a blameless officer and man. 

Deducting Jesse R. Grant and M. J. Cramer, 
appointed by Johnson, seven instances of rela- 
tives in political office remain, and of those but 
two were in truth and in fact appointed by the 
President, as 1 will show you. 

Orlando H. Ross, a cousin of the President, 



holds a clerkship under the Third Auditor of the 
Treasury. He was a soldier in the war, and 
Gen. Logan, as he stated in the Senate, procur- 
ed his appointment at the Treasury Department 
without the knowledge of the President, who, in 
fact, never heard of it, until he read it in a news- 
paper. This leaves six, and of these four hold 
local offices, viz : Geo. W. Dent, Appraiser at 
San Francisco ; James F. Casey, Collector at 
New Orleans ; one a brother and the other a 
brother-in-law of Mrs. Grant ; Peter Casey, 
Postmaster at Vicksburg, Miss., a brother of a 
brother-in-law of Mrs. Grant ; and George B. 
Johnson, Assessor of the Third District of Ohio, 
who married a third cousin of the President. 
These men hold local offices, and were selected 
and put forward, as has been universal in both 
political parties for fifty years, by the local Repre- 
sentative. 

When the member of Congress from a district 
certifies the character of an applicant for a post- 
office, or any othe.- office local in his district, 
and recommends his selection, the practice of 
the Government has always been to rely and 
act upon such representations, holding the mem- 
ber of Congress responsible to the Government 
and to his constituents, if he obtains unfit ap- 
pointments. 

It was in this way that the four persons just 
named were selected, the President having no 
part in the matter, if he believed the applicants 
fit and worthy, except to consult the wishes of 
the people, made known through their repre- 
sentatives, or else to overrule their wishes, upon 
the ground that it might be better for himself 
not to run the risk of having the matter some 
time or other flung in his face. 

Two appointments remain, and upon these 
the President did undoubtedly exercise his own 
choice and his own judgment. 

The first is Alexander Sharp, a connection 
of Mrs. Grant, who was appointed Marshal of 
the District of Columbia. This officer is virtu- 
ally a member of the President's household — he 
receives company with the family, introduces vis- 
itors, and generally helps along. For these reas- 
ons some relative or near friend of the President's 
family has always been found in this position. 

The remaining relative is Silas Hudson, Min- 
ister to Guatemala. He is cousin to the Presi- 
dent. Iowa, the State in which he lives, had 
the Mission to Guatemala before President 
Grant came in ; Fitz Henry Warren held it, 
and on his retirement Iowa claimed it still, and 
presented Mr. Hudson, who is described as an 
able and accomplished man. The President 
might have refused to appoint him without giv- 
ing just offense to the Republicans of Iowa, be- 
cause he might have taken a man from some 
other State ; but he did appoint him, and thus 
he furnished the needy "Liberals" with one 
awful example. 

APPOINTMENTS TO OFFICE — NEW YORK AP- 
POINTMENTS. 

But the President's selections for office gener- 
ally have, we are told, been partisan, personal 
and ill-judged. I believe the reverse of all this 
is true. He has appointed more Judges than 
any of his predecessors were called upon to se- 



Senator Con/clings Great Speech at New York, 



15 



lect, and his selections are such as to vindicate 
him from the charge of making personal prefer- 
ence, or gratification of himself, the criterion. 
When lie came to select our members of the 
Geneva Board he named Mr. Adams, whom he 
had never seen, and who was neither his parti- 
san or his friend. As counsel before that high 
tribunal, he selected Mr. Evarts, who was not 
his partisan, and Mr. Curtis, ami Mr. Cushing, 
who were political opponents. What Demo- 
cratic President ever did the like? Other cases 
might be cited to show how unselfish and con- 
scientious he has been. 

In the State of New York there was no com- 
plaint about appointments as long as particular 
men were permitted to dictate them. 

The hungry "Reformers" of today fattened 
and exulted then. It was, in their estimation, 
high merit and statesmanship for Senators and 
others to crouch and prowl day and night around 
the sources of power. No one overreached this 
thriving business ; it overreached itself. 

"Patronage" in the State of New York has 
been a prolific theme of misrepresentation. The 
public has been kept constantly advised of a 
"quarrel between our Senators"; yet there has 
been no such "quarrel." The fact is of a differ- 
ent kind. It is impossible to answer the clamor 
on this subject without alluding to personal mat- 
ters which have not heretofore seemed to me 
entitled to a public hearing; but now friends 
insist that a statement should be made, and I 
reluctantly comply. 

Between Gov. Morgan and myself, while we 
served together in the Senate, and between both 
and our colleagues in the House, there was 
always the best accord. For some reason dis- 
cordant action dates from the advent of Gov. 
Morgan's successor. 

For some time before the inauguration of 
President Grant, as well as afterward, one Sena- 
tor from New York visited the President assid- 
uously, and claimed to be his special champion ; 
the other Senator did neither of these things. 
One Senator conspicuously busied himself in the 
effort to repeal "The Tenure-of-Ofnce act," 
which the President was said to wish to have 
repealed ; the other Senator opposed the repeal 
throughout. One Senator appeared as the con- 
fidential representative of Mr. Stewart, in regard 
to his entering upon the office of Secretary of the 
Treasury ; the other Senator opposed the whole 
project of repealing or evading the law, and so 
tokkthe President. 

These and other incidents paved the way for 
the impression that one of these Senators was not 
to be regarded as a friend of the Administration. 
The opportunity thus offered was seized with 
avidity, and alleged acts of opposition were pa- 
raded, harped upon and distorted, till the dis- 
trust of the President and members of his Cabi- 
net was aroused. No attempt to counteract this 
proceeding was made, but the matter was left 
for lime to set right. Meanwhile the supposed 
friends of the unpliant Senator were pursued 
with groundless allegations, carried to the ap- 
pointing power ; and, for a year, men who then 
claimed to be "the exponents of Radical-Re- 
publicanism in New York " chuckled over the 



well-worn witticism, "one of our Senators is a 
figure 9 with the tail off." 

1 taring this long and somewhat annoying 
manoeuvre, no one ever made war because of it, 
in the party or out of the party — no one ever 
raised a note of discord. 

The favored Senator, for weeks after President 
Grant came in, was attended in Washington by 
a numerous band of friends, better known at 
Albany than at Washington, who assumed to 
speak for the Republican Party of the State. 
They were all worshippers and defenders of the 
Administration. They infested the White House 
and the departments, and assisted in "distribu- 
ting the patronage." 

Under these auspices men were expelled from 
office in Congressional districts having no Re- 
publican Representative to protect them, for the 
reason, always denied to the President, that 
they were the friends of Gov. Morgan, or of 
the other Senator, or not the friends of Gov. 
Fenton. 

Men believed to be objectionable to leading 
Republicans were put in place, and these pro- 
ceedings were cited to prove that to be " recog- 
nized," Republicans must be of a particular 
stripe. 

Among those thus selected were several per- 
sons whose unfitness soon ended in disgrace. 
One instance of misconduct after another came 
to the ears of the President, till, alarmed at 
such occurrences, he began to suspect the dis- 
cernment or the sincerity of those to whom he 
had listened. The result was that the Presi- 
dent grew more wary. It soon became known 
that he had increased the number of those with 
whom he had consulted, and had ceased to 
make appointments upon the ipse dixit of any 
individual. 

The first symptom of an inclination to eman- 
cipate himself from the dictation which had be- 
set him, caused alarm and offense. 

The President was expostulated with, and 
hints were given him of formidable defections to 
come, in the State of New York. It is even 
said that a Senator addressed him a letter al- 
luding to his own aspirations for the Presidency 
in 1S72, and offering to withdraw and give the 
State of New York to him, provided agreeable 
understandings could be had in regard to "the 
patronage." 

ATTEMPTS TO CARRY STATE CONVENTIONS. 

To impress and coerce the appointing power, 
a herculean effort was made in 1870 to carry the 
State Convention. 

Tammany Hall, with all its pedal attachments 
and whippers-in, came into the field. Money 
was lavished, and the State was tramped from 
end to end, to carry delegates who would "show 
Grant where the power is." The Convention 
met at Saratoga. The Senator who had headed 
the hunt, and early procured himself to be made - 
a delegate, was to preside in the Convention, 
and resolutions were to be adopted, and a State 
Central Committee made, which would "bring 
Grant to his milk." 

The patriotism and good sense of the Conven- 
tion frowned down these schemes, and George 



16 



The President and Ills Slanderers. 



William Curtis, a friend of the Administration, 
was chosen temporary Chairman. This secured 
the organization, and, in the hope of allaying all 
irritation, Mr. Van Wyck, who had been sup- 
ported by the anti-Administration element, was 
made permanent President by acclamation ; and 
the Senator who had made the issue was placed 
by Mr. Curtis upon leading committees. To 
the surprise of some the Senator did not serve 
on these committees, but held himself aloof. 

Many "office-holders" attended this Conven- 
tion and more than half aided the anti- Adminis- 
tration cause. Mr. Greeley was a candidate for 
Governor, and was pertinaciously supported by 
all those connected with the New York Custom 
House ; he failed from a want of confidence in 
him, so general among delegates, that election- 
eering and persuasion could not prevail against 
it; and even those who voted for him declared 
in many instances that they did so as a harmless 
compliment, knowing that he could not be 
nominated. 

The last duty of the Convention was to form 
a State Central Committee ; this was done by 
the delegation from each Congressional district 
agreeing upon one member. The roll of dis- 
tricts being called, all, with one exception, pre- 
sented a name ; but when the district of Senator 
Fenton was called, it turned out that divisions 
between his colleagues and himself had pre- 
vented an agreement; and in consequence of 
this the membership of the State Committee 
from that district stood vacant during the cam- 
paign. Faithful Republicans throughout the 
State labored hard in the canvass which ensued. 
The hinge and hope of the canvass was the City 
of New York. Congress had enacted an election 
law, under which it was believed that the fraudu- 
lent majorities counted by Tammany agents 
would be largely cut down. Our friends in the 
cit^ promised us in the country that 20,000 reduc- 
tion would surely take place; this, with a full 
vote in the rural districts, would give us the 
State. A gain in the city was therefore the 
pivot of the canvass, because Republicans in 
districts sure to elect their local tickets, would 
not exhaust themselves in piling up additional 
majorities for the State ticket, if the majorities 
were to be swamped by false counts in the City 
of New York. 

Gov. Fenton and his special friends were 
lukewarm throughout the canvass, the Gover- 
nor absenting himself from the State much of 
the time ; late in October he returned from 
the Western States, and visited the City of 
New York, where he was gazetted in the 
newspapers as prospecting the result. Up to 
this time, he had been silent, but on the 31st 
of October he spoke. This was five days be- 
fore the election, and the Governor had just re- 
turned from the city, where, if at all, the can- 
vass was to be saved ; he, therefore, was the 
man, and then was the time, to tell the Repub- 
licans of the State, whether it was or was not 
worth while to get out every vote. His speech 
was sent at once throughout the Republican 
Press of the State, appearing always in the 
same words. As printed in the New York 
Tribune, it contained this remarkable state- 
ment : "Troubles came upon us unfortunately 



in other districts, and now in the City of New 
York our pai-ty are in confusion and discour- 
agement growing out of some unfortunate Fed- 
eral appointments." Had this been true, it is 
hard to see how any Republican could have 
felt called upon to cast such a wet blanket over 
the party on the eve of an important election. 
That it was not true is proved by the fact that 
when election day came, not only twenty thou- 
sand, but twenty-six thousand, was struck from 
the Democratic majority in the city of New York. 
Had the Governor, instead of being devoted 
to the Republican party, and religiously anxi- 
ous for its success, been in collusion with Tam- 
many Hall, what could he have done so useful 
to the Democracy as the thing he did ? 

The result was all that a Democrat could de- 
sire or a Republican deplore. We lost the State, 
and 45,000 Republicans west of the Hudson 
River who voted at the gubernatorial election 
last before did not vote at all ; and this in a 
season so fine that the corn was all husked, the 
potatoes all dug, the buckwheat all gathered, 
and the roads as good on election day as they 
were in June. Hoffman's counted majority was 
only 33,096 in the State, and the 45,000 Repub- 
licans discouraged to stay at home would have 
elected Woodford by 12,000. 

The succeeding year ( 1 S71) brought the same 
attempt to cany the State Convention against 
the National Administration. Again Tammany 
men and money, volumes of Tribune slanders, 
and tireless effort contested the primaries in 
vain. The convention overlooked the irregular 
and factional course of Mr. Greeley and his 
Tammany allies, in calling local conventions to 
forestall and defy the decision of the State Con- 
vention upon the reorganization of the party in 
the city, and admitted both sets of delegates, 
the only condition being that thereafter the 
party should be one. Here was the rub ; the 
men who have since thrown off the mask, and 
revealed themselves as deserters, were determined 
then to divide and destroy the party. Theymeant 
then to wrest the State from President Grant, and 
to pave the way for a contesting delegation to 
the National Convention if they could not by 
some artifice seize the delegation itself. 

The good sense of the Convention frustrated 
the scheme, and then came the sorry theatrical 
of a secession from the Convention, led by fac- 
tionists who have been in turn the friends of all 
parties and the betrayers of all. 

"PATRONAGE," AND REMOVALS. 

The course of Mr. Greeley and its reference 
to patronage and spoils, is visible in a letter he 
wrote to Mr. Cornell after he made up his mind 
to defeat, if possible, the weeding out of Tam- 
many men from the Republican organization. 
Here is his letter, putting his action squarely on 
^the ground of dissatisfaction with the " appoint- 
ing poiver." 

New York, April 9, 1S71. 
Dear Sir : It gives me no pleasure to advise you, 
and the Committee of which you are the head, that I am 
obliged to decline the part assigned me by the State 
Committee in the proposed reorganization of the Repub- 
lican Party of our city. Had a little forbearance and 
liation been evinced by the appointing power at 
Washington, I think this might have bee': different. 
Yours, HORACE GREELEY. 



Senator Conkling''s Great Speech at Net" York. 



17 



The sapping and mining begun in 1S70, and 
secretly continued ever since, has culminated in 
the bolt no longer covered up, which has re- 
cently occurred ; its strength was in its secrecy 
and in its denied existence; its weakness is in 
its being known of all men. 

It has been said that the President removed 
friends of Mr. Kenton ; if this were true, when 
made an explanation of the betrayal or deser- 
tion of « the party, it sinks those who resort to 
it to the lowest depth of sordid hypocrisy. But 
it is not true. One friend of Mr. Fenton was 
removed to gratify Mr. Moses H. Grinnell, and 
in no other instance to my knowledge was a 
friend of Mr. Fenton's displaced, except for 
cause ; while to this day the great body of those 
he recommended to office remain in office still. 
To illustrate this, since President Grant came 
in, not six Postmasters in the entire State have 
been appointed at my instance ; more than two 
hundred have been appointed at Senator Fen- 
ton's instance, and not one has been disturbed 
unless for official delinquency. 

COLLECTOR MURPHY. 

Mr. Murphy was appointed Collector of New 
York, but not to gratify me or at my solicita- 
tion. He has been held up as a scoundrel, yet 
the records conclusively prove that he increased 
the collection of revenue and diminished the 
percentage of cost. No act of dishonesty has 
to my knowledge ever been proved against him. 
I moved, and insisted upon, the investigation 
which was lately made of the Custom House — 
the inquiry was conducted by some of the best 
and ablest members of the Senate, and the re- 
port acquits Mr. Murphy of every charge im- 
pairing his integrity. I do not allude to the 
matter, however, to go into Mr. Murphy's 
merits ; I did not suggest his appointment, and 
during his collectorship I never asked or rec- 
ommended an appointment at his hands, not 
one. It was vainly hoped that there would be 
less carping, if no favor to me was asked for ; 
and none was ever asked or received. My ob- 
ject is to show you the wickedness of the charge 
that the President appointed Mr. Murphy con- 
trary to the judgment of the best men in the 
party, and for some unusual or improper reason. 

Mr. Murphy was an experienced, successful 
business man, at leisure, and vigorous enough to 
endure the great strain and labor of the place ; if 
the President was wrong in selecting him, let me 
show you who else were wrong. 

Here are some of those who, in writing, rec- 
ommended his nomination or confirmation. 
Their signatures are in my possession. 

Spofford Brothers &Co., 
John Hoey, 



Edwin D. Morgan, 
George Opdyke, 
Henry Clews, 
John A. Griswold, 
Chas. J. Folger, 
Edwards Pierrepont, 
Isaac H. Bailey,' » 
Thos. C. Acton, 
Chas. W. Griswold, 
Thos. Hillhouse, 
S. H. Wales, 
Wm. A. Darling, 
D. D. T. Marshall, 
Wm. Laimbeer, 
Brooks Brothers, 

A. S. Dodd, 

B. S. Luddington, 



Isaac Dayton, 

George D. Morgan, 

Thos. B. Van Buren, 

John H. Hall, 

O. W. Joslyn, 

R.W. Marlow.Jr. &Co., 

M. Mitchell, 

R. H. Arkenburgh, 

F. Chandler, 

R. W. Bleecker, 

Hooper C. Van Vorst, 

Jas. Struthers, 

Carolan O. B. Bryant, 

Thos. J. Owen & Co., 

J. E. de Rivera. 



J. C. Churchill, M. C, 
Orange Ferriss, M.C., 
Hamilton Ward, M.C, 
Gil,--. Vf. Hotchkiss, M.C, 
David S. Bennett. M.C, 

William A. WhitbecJr. 
Edward Haight, 
George Bliss, Jr., 
Van s, haich & Co . 

F. T. James & Co.. 

A. D. Williams & Co., 
Maxwell & Co., 
Harney & Searles, 

J >aniel W. Adams, 

Hallgarten & l'.i >., 
Drake Bros., 

Edward Brandon, 

Closson & Hayes, 
N. P. Stanton, 
Boyd, Falls & Vincent, 
Plane & Van Emburgh, 
Taylor Brothers, 
John YV. Brown, 

B. M. Nevas, 
Cornelius Esselstyne, 
John R. Currie, 
Hedden, Winchester & 

Co., 
Glendinning, Davis & 
Armory, 



1 I 

Joseph Bra it in, 

E. B. v. 

Sixty-seven Members of 
the Republican Gene- 
ral Committee of New 
York, 

Cornelius Itortle, 

John M. Welch, 

Henry Tridler, 

H. V. Esselstyne, 

H. H. Rockfeller, 

P. E, Van Alstyne, 

J. W. C. Hogeboom, 

Matthew Hale, 

E. M. M 

I tyne, 
George 1 lawson, 
l ' I r rns, 
Silas F. Smith, 
N. Lapham, 
Republican General 
Committee of Kings 
County, New York, 
and re.»d;nts of 
Brooklyn, N. Y.. no 
in number, 
E. W. Leavenworth, 
and others, residents 
of Syracuse. 



Besides these many others recommended Mr. 
Murphy's appointment; this list includes only 
those who addressed me. It does not include 
any of the recommendations made to the Presi- 
dent or to the Secretary of the Treasury. 

You will, I trust, pardon the time given to 
these facts; if it were right to detain you, many 
others might be stated, showing the injustice 
and falsehood which have been piled upon the 
President, and upon me, in this regard. The 
whole pretense, that the friends of Gov. Fenton 
were ostracised because they were his friends, is ' 
the veriest sham that could be palmed off upon 
the public ; and yet the argument of spoils is 
used without a blush to extenuate the acts of 
those who, for two years, have been plotting the 
destruction of the party. 

This clap-trap about improper appointments 
is the same in substance as that heard in the 
time of Jackson, and of John Quincy Adams, 
and there is less cause for it relatively now then 
there was then. 

MR. SUMNER AND MR. GREELEY HATE 
"PRETENSION." 

It is as untruthful, as the pretense that the 
"President is a quarreler," that he insisted upon 
a renomination, or that he is a pretentious man. 
The President is charged with "pretension" by 
Mr. Sumner in a speech written and printed be- 
forehand, in which Mr. Sumner speaks of him- 
self, and praises himself, one hundred and fifty- 
six times, and flatters himself thoroughly and 
copiously, twenty times. But Sumner is nothing 
to Greeley. Greeley thinks Grant "pretentious" 
too, and Greeley at the Boston Jubilee, in ex- 
plaining his own fitness for the Presidency, 
modestly spoke of himself twenty timos in ten 
minutes — this is twice a minute. Had Sumner 
used the personal pronoun at the same rate no 
printing office would have had big I's enough to 
set up the speech. 

THE "MILITARY RING." 

But we may not stop here in counting the 
President's crimes;— he has, we are told, a 
"military ring" at the White House, and turns 



18 



The President and Ills Slanderers. 



the White House into a "military barracks." 
When he moved into the White House he heard 
soldiers patroling in the hall, and when he asked 
them what it meant, they said they were Presi- 
dent Johnson's body guard ; he told them he 
wanted no guard, and sent them to their quar- 
ters. The next day he gave orders removing 
all troops from Washington, and not a military 
company has ever been there since. 

The "military ring" consists of three young 
men who write for the President without a 
farthing of expense to the Treasury. The 
President is authorized by law to employ and 
pay Secretaries. The gentlemen who assist him 
were on his staff in the war, and are now on the 
staff of Gen. Sherman ; their commissions are 
their own ; the President cannot take them 
away ; and now, in time of peace, Gen. Sher- 
man does not require their services. One of 
them is detailed to oversee .the public parks, 
and the other to assist the President, which 
they do from love of the man, and without a 
cent of pay beyond what they would draw if 
they sat at Gen. Sherman's head-quarters, doing 
nothing. This is the whole of it ; exactly like 
the case of Col. Bliss and his father-in-law, 
President Taylor, or the case of Donelson and 
Jackson, or the case of Andrew Johnson and 
the three or four army officers who assisted him. 
It saves several thousand dollars a year, does 
the public business, and nobody is harmed. 

"sea-side loiterings." 

The catalogue of the President's atrocities 
jwould be incomplete without one other thing. 
During ten or twelve weeks of heat and fever 
and ague at Washington, his family go to a 
cottage at the sea-side, and he goes and comes 
from there to the Capital. 

It is eight hours from the White House to 
the cottage, with two mails a day and a tele- 
graph every instant. Nothing can occur, how- 
ever suddenly, demanding his attention, with- 
out his being within immediate call ; yet this 
is the occasion of constant hullabaloo. Gov. 
Hoffman leaves his Slate and resides at New- 
port, R. I. , for the summer. Mr. James Brooks, 
though member of Congress, goes to China 
and Japan, not returning even when Congress 
meets. Gen. Jackson used to spend weeks at 
the Rip Raps in Hampton Roads, where no in- 
telligence could reach him from Washington in 
days, and then only by special messenger, and 
whence he could not return for days, if sent for. 
No telegraph, railroad, daily mail, or even 
steamboat, plied there then. President Adams, 
separated from Massachusetts by a stage-coach 
ride of many days, used to spend weeks at his 
home. Washington passed much of his time at 
Mount Vernon, and even that was further re- 
moved in communication with the Capital then, 
than Long Branch is now. 

Rulers in all countries have felt at liberty to 
tarry a distance from their official residence 
during a portion of the year ; but no examples, 
experience, or common sense stand in the way 
of the cruciners of Grant. 

The public, however, will be satisfied with 
one feet, viz : that no instance has yet been 
discovered or pretended, in which anything, 



however small, was neglected or left undone 
because the President Mas absent. This one 
fact answers a hurricane of abuse. 

I have discussed, perhaps, at inexcusable 
length, the paltry and personal slanders drag- 
ged into the campaign, and yet nothing has 
been said of the blameless, simple, daily life 
of the President, nor of his innocence of a quar- 
relsome disposition. 

He quarreled with Lee, and every other rebel 
while the rebellion lasted. He settled that 
quarrel, and has never quarreled since, unless 
it be quarreling not to obey intolerable dicta- 
tion, and simply to let alone men who oppose 
and denounce him. 

If there be any charge against the President 
which have escaped me, I will speak of it, if 
any one will bring it to mind. If there be 
none, let us rise from gossip to history ; from 
scandal to business. 

Let us turn from the man to the magistrate, 
and scan his official record and stewardship. 

WHAT THE ADMINISTRATION HAS DONE — 
FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 

What has the Administration done in three 
years? First, it has maintained our rights 
with every foreign power, and kept the peace 
with all the world. Gov. Seward said to me 
last year after he had girdled the earth with his 
travels, " How remarkable is our success in 
foreign affairs ; but two years ago Russia was 
our only friend in Christendom, and now America 
has not an enemy in the world." He proceeded 
to say that this good result came from the tem- 
perate and just course of our Government. Mr. 
Sumner has lately told us that we are in a " mud- 
dle' with everybody." Can any of you tell with 
whom we are in a "muddle?" Can any of 
you name a sea, a continent, or an island where 
our flag is not respected ? Can any of you name 
a commercial centre in which our securities are 
not sought ? Can any of you name a power 
which denies a right to one American citizen ? 
Spain's release of Dr. Houard, whose American 
citizenship is very doubtful, leaves no contro- 
versy, no contested matter, with any power on 
earth, save England. 

With England, preceding Administrations 
failed to settle large and dangerous questions. 
This Administration has composed them all in 
one treaty, applauded by the country and the 
world as one of the best products of statesman- 
ship and civilization. Recently, a difference 
arose as to the construction of the treaty, and 
England was unwilling and afraid to submit 
the question to the tribunal to which it plainly 
belonged. The British Government took the 
ground that they had agreed to a treaty which 
did not contain what they intended ; that their 
meaning was not set down in language so plain 
that they were willing to trust it to the arbitra- 
tion at Geneva ; and they insisted that we should 
withdraw part of our claims. This was a strange 
position, and involved a humiliating admission ; 
it was saying virtually that their agents had not 
been able to cope with ours. Indeed this was 
said without disguise, and with taunts, in the 
British Parliament. There is nothing here 
surely to wound American pride. 



Senator ConkUnfs Great Speech at New York. 



19 



England, with a Parliament eight hundred 
years old, renowned for centuries in exploits of 
diplomacy, sent five of her trained men to bar- 
gain with an infant nation scarce out of its 
swaddling clothes ; an agreement was made, 
written and signed, and afterward England dis- 
covered that it did not read as she says she 
thought it did, and so she threw up the sponge, 
and cried out that she had been outfought and 
outwitted in her own field of law and diplomacy. 
Noblemen ajul University men were England's 
Commissioners — they sealed the treaty with 
signet rings bearing ancient coats-of-arms ; but 
the gossips said that one of our untitled and 
self-educated Commissioners had nothing to seal 
with except a button. This seems the story 
over again of the poor boy with a pin-hook and 
twine, who caught more fish than the rich boy 
with the rod, the reel, the line of silk, and the 
best of fish-hooks. 

England's refusal to go to trial, unless we 
would agree not to prove or argue part of our 
case, was met on our side by the statement that 
we insisted upon having the law settled for 
the future in regard to indirect damages so 
called. 

Our Government insisted that hereafter Eng- 
land should never demand any damages from us, 
except such as she admitted to be within the law 
of nations now. Upon this ground the Presi- 
dent declined to withdraw any of our claims, 
saying, however, that indirect losses would not 
be pressed, provided by agreement between the 
parties, or by a decision of the Court, we could 
be guaranteed for the future against similar lia- 
bilities. Negotiations ensued, resulting in a 
supplemental article or clause of the treaty, and 
before this was finally accepted the tribunal at 
Geneva did, what we all the while maintained 
its right todo, and made adecision good for the fu- 
ture as well as the present, and good for us as well 
as for England, denying the right of one nation 
to recover certain kinds of damage from another. 
By this rule we will settle with England as often 
as she is a belligerent and we a neutral ; and if 
she is content, we should be. We are to be the 
neutral hereafter ; we shall have no more rebel- 
lions ; no foreign power will be impatient to get 
up a war with us ; but England, differently 
situated, with her elbows hitting the elbows of 
other nations, may not be so fortunate ; and 
when her commerce and her cause suffers from 
American citizens, or from cruisers or privateers 
built in America, we will measure to her the rule 
of damages she asks for now. Whether England 
keeps or breaks the treaty, it will remain the 
greatest event of diplomacy in our history. Had 
Hamilton Fish rendered no other public service 
in his life, his ability, devotion and success in 
this great matter would inscribe his name high 
up on the roll of illustrious names. The only 
error pretended in the management of the Ala- 
bama claims has been the maintenance of views 
of which the noisiest advocate always has been 
Mr. Sumner ; but even he has not succeeded in 
producing a "muddle" with any foreign power, 
not even with the aid of his friend Schurz, 
by his romances and vagaries, touching the 
sale, by American merchants, of arms to 
France. 



FINANCES, DEBT, TAXES, RETRENCHMENT, 

The public debt has been paid as no one 
dared expect or hope. The present Adminis- 
tration found a national debt <>f $2,700,000,000. 
During Andrew Johnson's Administration the 
whole reduction of this debt was $13,655,668. 
The annual interest account was $128,502,- 
102.24. The annual expense account averaged 
$179,271,680; making an annual draft upon the 
Treasury of $307,773,782.24. This annual 
draft was met by internal taxes and customs 
duties. 

Under Andrew Johnson annual taxes aver- 
aged as follows : 

Internal taxes $162,194,491 29 

Customs duties 193,691,069 70 

The country was flooded with paper money, 
and trade deranged with inflated prices. Cur- 
rency ranged from thirty-five to seventy-one 
cents on the dollar. Our opponents scouted our 
ability to reduce the debt ; they said that no 
such debt ever had been paid or ever would be. 

The National Democratic Convention of 1868 
declared against its payment in coin and in 
favor of subjecting it to taxation. 

Such was the condition of things confronting 
us in March, 1869. Up to July I, 1872, there 
has been paid of principal of the debt $333,976,- 
916.39. This is a payment every month of 
$8,349,422. It is a payment already of 13 2I-IOO 
per cent, of the whole debt, and at the same 
rate of payment not a dollar would remain in 
twenty-one years. 

Saving of annual interest in coin, $20,000,000. 

About $300,000,000 has been refunded at <\}4 
and 5 per cent., saving an annual interest of 
$3,000,000, and up to the maturity of the new 
bonds $20, 000, 000, and paving the wayto refund- 
ing $ 1,000,000,000 more at still lower interest. 

The premium on gold has been reduced from 
forty per cent, to twelve per cent. 

Great reduction of taxes preceded and fol- 
lowed Gen. Grant's inauguration. 

Since he came in, and prior to the last session 
of Congress, annual internal taxes were reduced 
$55,212,000. Tariff annually reduced $29,526,- 
409,09. Total, $84,738,409.09. Despite these 
reductions, the increase of revenue accounted for 
under Gen. Grant over the same period preced- 
ing is $84,994,049.74. At the last session of 
Congress taxes were further reduced (annually) 
$62,000,000. 

This cuts off pretty much all internal taxes, 
except on whiskey, beer, tobacco and banks, 
and a portion of the stamp tax ; the income tax 
dies this year. Tea and coffee, for the first 
time in our memory, are wholly free. The 
people have paid heretofore $18,000,000 annu- 
ally on tea and coffee. 

At the same time, with this work of reduction, 
pensions to soldiers have been largely increased, 
and large appropriations made to improve rivers 
and harbors. At their wits' end how to meet 
these facts, our enemies have started a new idea. 

WHAT HAS THE ADMINISTRATION TO DO 
WITH PAYING THE DEBT? 

From Washington down, every Administration 
has been tried by its financial results. But now 



20 



The President and Ills Slanderers. 



we hear that the authorities deserve no credit for 
paying the debt, that the people have paid it. 
Of course the people have paid it, but who has 
honestly collected and accounted for the money? 
Who has reduced the expenses ? Who has up- 
held the public credit? Who has cheapened 
the interest? Who has wisely applied the 
money ? Who has made the greenback in your 
pocket, that used to be worth only half its face, 
almost as good as gold ? The people paid taxes 
under Andrew Johnson twice as great as they 
pay now. Why was not twice as much of the 
debt paid then? Why was only $13,000,000 
of the debt paid then, with extravagant taxa- 
tion? Under Andrew Johnson, the whiskey 
ring, the contractors, and other "Liberals," 
preyed upon the revenue so, that it is calculated 
one-quarter of the whole was lost. Under the 
present Administration, after taxes were lessened 
$84,000,000 a year, collections increased $84,- 
000,000. Did the people do that? 

If one of your agents made a given amount of 
money go twice as far as an agent before him 
had done, would it be you, or the agent to be 
credited or blamed? 

But look a little further. The expenses every- 
where have been reduced, and so reduced that 
they are less per capita this year than they were 
under Washington, and less than they were un- 
der any Administration since, with only four ex- 
ceptions, and in case of these four the advantage 
is only apparent and but a few cents. Com- 
pare the year i860 under Buchanan, with last 
year, 187 1. In i860, the population being 
3 I »443.i 2 i» the expenses were $1.95 for each 
person ; 1871, population 38,555,983, expenses 
$1.76 for each person. There is one great dif- 
ference between these two years not shown by 
the figures. 

In 1S60, the whole amount expended for 
public buildings, improvements of rivers and 
harbors, and other public works throughout the 
country, was only $2,913,371.48. 

In 1871, such public improvements were made 
and paid for, to the amount of $10,733,759.05. 
If allowance be made for these lasting im- 
provements, greater during the last two years 
than before, the actual cost per head of govern- 
ing the country under Grant, is as small as it 
ever was since the foundation of the Government. 
In 1858, the War Department cost $25,679,- 
121.63. In 1S59, it cost $23,154,720.53. 

In i860, under Floyd, the accounts of the 
Department were not closed, but went over in 
part to Lincoln's Administration. 

In 1871, the War Department cost $22,376,- 
981.28. 

Taking the whole running expenses of the 
Government, for the Executive, Legislative and 
Judicial Departments, including the Army and 
Navy, and Foreign Ministers, Consuls, and 
Agents, the cost in i860 was $61,402,408.64. 
The same account in 1871 was $68,684,613.92. 
With new States and Territories, with seven 
millions more population, with new Courts, 
and the Internal Revenue establishment, the 
whole excess of cost in 1871, over i860, was 
$7,282,205.28. 

Here is an increase of thirteen per cent, of 
cost, with an increase of twenty-five per cent. 



of population, saying nothing of increased de- 
mands. , 

The "Reformers" had not looked up these 
figures when Mr. Trumbull stated at Cooper 
Institute, that the expenses of the Government, 
aside from interest and pensions, ought to be 
not more than thirty-three per cent, greater now 
than before the war ; it turns out that the in- 
crease is only about one-third as much as he 
thinks it should be. 

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM. 

During the present year large additional re- 
ductions are to come ; internal revenue districts 
are to be reduced to eighty in all ; supervisors 
of revenue to ten in all ; deputies and assistants 
will vanish with the taxes they heretofore col- 
lected, and only a skeleton of the revenue es- 
tablishment will be left. Four millions and a 
half will be saved this year in the cost of con- 
ducting the Internal Revenue Bureau. 

The Freedmen's Bureau, established by Lin- 
coln and Stanton, and Sherman and Howard, 
and vetoed by Andrew Johnson, which has cost 
much money and done much good, is this year 
to be finally wound up. 

These things added to the pruning which the 
army and navy and Indian and revenue service 
have undergone, make this the best Adminis- 
tration in civil service reform the country ever 
had. In civil service reform Grant is the pio- 
neer President. No one before him inaugura- 
ted or proposed it. Andrew Johnson, a deser- 
ter from his party, had, by using appointments 
as bribes and threats, made patronage a mere 
corruption fund. Who found fault then ? The 
whole Democratic party justified and applauded 
it. Where were our virtuous and edifying Re- 
formers then, Trumbull and the rest ? The 
Tenure of Office act only required the assent of 
the Senate to removals, but the Democrats 
made war even upon that, holding that the Pres- 
ident should be left absolute and unfettered. 
When Grant came in he help to perfect the pre- 
sent Tenure of Office law, so as to put a check 
upon himself. In three Messages the President 
has urged civil service reform, and has given it 
his whole influence. Under a mere permission 
not requiring anything of him, he appointed a 
Board to prepare rules and regulations govern- 
ing appointments, and establishing competitive 
examinations ; and these rules he has diligently 
put in force ; and yet he is railed at by men 
who quarreled with him, merely because they 
could not control more patronage. Could any 
President have done more? 

He might have appointed his enemies, and 
turned out his friends. Nothing else would 
have silenced the pack now barking at his heels. 

DEFAULTERS DETECTED AND PUNISHED. 

Remorseless rigor has ferreted out and pun- 
ished delinquents and defaulters. Most of them 
have not been men appointed by Grant, but 
those whose crimes began under past Adminis- 
trations ; some of them have been men, recom- 
mended by " Reformers," now mouthing about 
bad appointments ; but wherever found, they 
have been caught, if possible, and when caught, 
nothing has protected them. 



Senator Conkling*s Great Speech at New York. 



21 



Hodge, a Faymaster, and a Democrat in 
politics, embezzled for years under Andrew 
Johnson, but was jiever detected till after Grant 
came in; then he was hurried to a penitentiary. 
Norton, Money-Onler Superintendent in the 
New York Post-office, began his depredations 
under Andrew Johnson, and took more than 
$30,000, but was never found out till last year ; 
then he was arrested, and it turned out that 
Horace Greeley was one of the postmaster's 
bondsmen. A prosecution is in progress, and if 
Mr. Greeley shouldn't happen to be elected, he 
will be obliged to pay up — the amount is $1 15,- 
428.71 and interest. It is upon such facts as these 
that "Reformers" and other Democrats make 
hue and cry about defalcations under Gen. Grant. 
Will any of you name the Democratic official 
thief who was ever punished by Democrats? 

The City of New York has swarmed with 
plunderers, from the Big "Boss" to the littlest 
wiggler of Tammany Hall ; they are all Demo- 
crats, and their guilt of stealing tens of millions 
has been notorious for more than a year. Gov- 
ernor, Judges, District Attorney, Sheriff, po- 
lice, all are Democrats, but not a thief has 
been punished, nor a stolen dollar recovered 
back. All these thieves are for Greeley ; they 
all shout for Greeley and "Reform," and all 
curse Grant. 

The Homestead policy has been extended so 
as to give a hundred and sixty acres of land to 
every soldier and sailor who served for ninety 
days, and was honorably discharged. 

American ship-building has received the first 
real encouragement for years. By the recent 
Tariff act, all materials for ship-building will, 
by means of drawback, come in duty free, and 
thus American ship-yards will be enabled to 
compete, as to materials, with the ship-yards of 
the world. 

"CENTRALISM." — HOW CONGRESS HAS CEN- 
TRALIZED. 

American citizens, high and low, rich and 
poor, black and white, whether in Spain, on the 
high seas, or in the South, have been protected. 
But this is called "centralism." Every civilized 
government may protect its citizens in the utter- 
most ends of the earth, but when the United 
States interposes to check murders, and burn- 
ings, and barbarities at which humanity shudders, 
perpetrated by thousands, and overawing all 
local authority, it is suddenly discovered that we 
are in danger of "centralism." This discovery 
is made by Mr. Greeley and the very men who 
cried the loudest for the Ku-klux law. Here are 
Greeley's words, spoken June 12, 187 1, after he 
came back from the South : 

" I hold our Government bound by its duty of pro- 
tecting our citizens in their fundamental rights, to pass 
and enforce laws for the extirpation of the execrable Ku- 
klux conspiracy ; and if it has not the power to do it, 
then I say our Government is no Government, but a 
sham. I therefore, on every proper occasion, advocated 
and justified the Ku-klux act. I hold it especially desi- 
rable for the South ; and if it does not prove strong 
enough to effect its purpose, I hope it will be made 
stronger and stronger." 

The law here spoken of is the law exactly as 
it exists today, including the habeas corpus 
suspension, which has now expired by its own 
limitation. 



No other act of "centralism" has been en- 
acted of late, unless it is an amendment of the 
Election law, vehemently demanded and ap- 
proved by Mr. Greeley. Hear what he said 
about it only a few months ago : 

" It is urged by the Democratic organs tint the law is 
to be enforced in State and municipal elections. This is 
done to make it more obnoxious, it that be possible, to 
their party. But, unfortunately this is an error. The 
law applies only to Presidential and Congressional elec- 
tions, though we heartily wish it could be made to apply 
to all others." 

The "centralism" of this law consists in al- 
lowing the Courts, upon the application of ten 
citizens, to appoint two persons, one from each 
political party, to watch the polls at which 
members of Congress and Presidential electors 
are to be chosen. These watchers have no 
power to arrest any one or to do anything ex- 
cept to look on as witnesses and see whether 
fraud takes place — and this without a farthing 
of compensation or expense. Do you think any 
honest voter wdl be offended by this ? Will 
any honest man object to so harmless a safe- 
guard against fraudulent voting and fraudulent 
counting? Since theTammany exposures no man 
doubts that the voice of the ballot-box has been 
stifled for years by election frauds ; and here is 
a law which can do no harm, and under which 
the Democrats themselves said, we had the only 
approach to a fair election in New York that had 
happened for years. 

REAL DANGERS ARE STATE RIGHTS AND 
REBEL CLAIMS. 

No, my friends, the cry of "centralism" is a 
mere fetch; the real danger is the other way. De- 
centralization, which means State Rights in the 
old pestilent secession sense, is the real danger. 
You need to stand guard against the doctrine of 
paramount State sovereignty which ushered in 
rebellion, and which, if it gain head, will usher 
in the payment of the rebel debt, the payment 
of rebel pensions, the payment of losses from 
the ravages of the war, and a brood of dire 
heresies. 

This is no chimera. Democrats and "Re- 
formers " struck hands, at the last session, in 
admitting rebels to the Court of Claims, to re- 
cover for their cotton captured in the war ; and 
every Democrat, with most of the new converts 
in the Senate, voted to pay from the Treasury 
rebel claimants, for carrying the mail in the 
Southern States after they went into rebellion ; 
an act which Republicans prevented after a 
weary contest. 

" Centralism " is a mere goblin. Whenever 
Congress transcends the Constitution the Court 
will so decide, and the people will apply the 
corrective. But watch you, and pray to be de- 
livered from that dogma of State independence, 
which once drenched the land in blood and 
covered it with taxes and with mourning. All 
the "centralism" we have now is a strong and 
stable Government, under which the nation pros- 
pers, with safety to property, labor, liberty and 
hfe. Woe to the day, and woe to the hour, 
when the people change it off, for, they know 
not what. 

A contented mind is great riches ; and to let 
well enough alone is the sum of wisdom. 



22 



The President and His Slanderers. 



CANT AROIT INVESTIGATIONS. 

With some minds the greater the humbug, 
the greater t lie sensation. The country is filled 
with factional out-cry, and one of the catch- 
words is "investigations." "Reformers" in 
the Senate wasted weeks and months in at- 
tempting to mislead the public in this respe&t. 
It was brazenly pretended that men like Buck- 
ingham of Connecticut, and Hamlin of Maine, 
and Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, and Howe 
of Wisconsin, and Anthony of Rhode Island, 
and other of the best and purest statesmen of 
the nation, attempted to cloak fraud and stifle 
inquiry. The New York Tribune and other 
unprincipled newspapers published pretended 
speeches which were never made, put into the 
mouths of Administration Senators, as uttered 
in caucus, by myself among others, declaring 
that the Administration should not be investi- 
gated. Nothing could be more false. No 
friend of the Administration ever objected to 
the most searching and sweeping investigation, 
but always the contrary. The only men who 
thwarted or delayed investigation were our 
opponents. They did, as I will show you. 

On the first day of the session I offered a re- 
solution instructing the Military Committee to 
investigate the case of Hodge, and see whether 
anybody else was at fault, and what could be 
done to close the door for the future. Mr. 
Trumbull insisted that there should be one and 
the same committee to investigate everything. 
lie moved such an amendment, and in such 
form as to make Carl Schurz Chairman, the 
plan of the " Liberals " being to make Mr. 
Schurz charioteer of a mud-machine to befoul 
the party during this canvass in the name of the 
Senate. 

We urged that one committee could not in- 
vestigate everything, and that to make the 
work thorough it must be parcelled out to dif- 
ferent committees. This was met with a storm 
of electioneering flings and insinuations, which 
consumed days. Finally, to bring the matter 
to an end, we acquiesced in having a single 
committee to which all investigations should go. 
Every man of sense must see that if the object 
was full and speedy inquiry , this was not the 
way, and so the event proved. 

When the Committee was raised, I moved 
an investigation of the New York Custom 
House ; Mr. Trumbull passionately objected, 
and through the resolution over by a point of 
order. As soon as a majority could do so, it 
was taken up and passed ; the Hodge resolution 
followed, and other resolutions, and what was 
the result? The Committee, thus over-loaded, 
was able only to complete the Custom House 
inquiry, and this snowed under everything else. 
The Hodge in. titer, and other things, wait ; and 
when the Presidential election is over, and there 
is nothing to be made by clap-trap and bun- 
combe, we shall be permitted probably to refer 
them to appropriate committees. When the 
French arms resolution was offered by Mr. 
Sumner, the Republican Senators offered to 
vote the investigation instantly; but Mr. Sum- 
ner objected, and asked its postponement. 
When h£ moved it again, all other business 



was at once laid aside, and again the majority 
offered to vote for the inquiry. But Mr. Sum- 
ner insisted upon speech-making, and he and 
Schurz went at it, attempting to prove in advance 
all the dismal rigmarole of a false and foolish 
preamble. 

Of course, their speeches could not go un- 
answered to the counrty, lest silence should 
seem to give consent ; and so days and weeks 
were wasted, when in five minutes the pre- 
tended object could have been accomplished. 
The pretended object was not the real object, 
as everybody knew ; the aim was political 
effect, and for this the " Reformers " would be- 
smirch the Government, even though the cru- 
sade disgraced us, or involved us with foreign 
Powers. 

The result, as you know, was ruinous to those 
who began it. The French arms investigation 
is a fair sample of the rest. We had, in all, 
in the two Houses, fourteen committees set on 
the Administration. Such a thing was never 
heard of before. No Administration was ever so 
put under a microscope; or pried into with mali- 
cious eyes. What did it all amount to? Direct- 
ly and indirectly, these investigations probably 
cost, in time, money, and neglect of legislation, 
millions of dollars — and who is benefited ? No- 
body, but the Administration they were intend- 
ing to destroy. The President, and those for 
whom he is responsible, have come out like 
pure gold tried by the fire, brighter than be- 
fore—the country pays the bills, and the "Re- 
formers " curse in their sleeves at their ill-luck. 

KU-KLUX DOINGS. 

The only investigation of value related to the 
condition of the South. The Committee on 
Southern Outrages made a report full of fright- 
ful lessons. In ten States an organization exists 
known as the " Ku-Klux Klan," or "Invisible 
Empire of the South. " 1 1 is a resurrection of the 
remains of the rebel army. Gen. Forrest, of 
Fort Pillow, was its chief head, or "Grand Cy- 
clops." It is a secret oath-bound band. Its 
object is to kill and drive out "Radicals" and 
"carpet-baggers," and to intimidate the blacks 
from voting against the Democratic party. 
Speaking to those who have not read the evi- 
dence, the existence, the nature and the deeds 
of these assassins are so incredible, that I dare 
not ask you to accept them on my word. Let 
me state a few things contained in the report, 
and proved by much testimony. 

Gen. Forrest admits his belief that the order 
is 500,000 strong. In the two Carolinas, Geor- 
gia, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida, IOO 
counties have been kept under a reign of terror. 
One of the obligations of membership is to com- 
mit perjury as a witness or a juror. Many lead- 
ing wealthy men are among the actors, and until 
Congress interfered, the State authorities were 
powerless, or unwilling to enforce the laws ; 
barbarous atrocities occurred nightly, but no one 
was punished or even arrested. Whites and 
blacks were murdered and robbed, their houses 
burned, and nameless deeds done by disguised 
bands. 

In fourteen counties of North Carolina, eigh- 
teen murders were done, and 315 whippings oc- 



'Senator Conkling's Great Speech at New York; 



23 



curred. In nine counties in South Carolina, 
forty murders and over two thousand other out- 
rages. In twenty-nine counties of Georgia sev- 
enty-two murders and 126 whippings. In 
twenty-six counties of Alabama 215 murders, 
and 116 other outrages. In twenty counties of 
Mississippi twenty-three murders, and seventy- 
six other outrages, and in a single county of 
Florida 153 murders. 

In these ninety-nine counties 426 murders 
were done, and 2,909 other acts of violence. 

The object in all this, as extorted from many 
witnessess, was "to put down Radical rule and 
negro suffrage." Thus scourged, the people of 
the South piteously appealed to Congress for pro- 
tection. A committee was sent to the Southern 
States to learn the facts, and a law was passed 
authorizing the United States Courts to act in 
the matter. The same law authorized the sus- 
pension, for a limited space, of the habeas cor- 
pus, in case it should be necessary. Under this 
act of Congress, at the January term of Court in 
South Carolina, 501 men were indicted by the 
Grand Jury for these crimes of violence. In the 
Northern District of Mississippi, 490 were indict- 
ed, and in the Southern District of Mississippi, 
152. In North Carolina, 98 1 men were indicted. 

In South Carolina, five of these culprits were 
immediately tried and convicted, and fifty-three 
of them pleaded guilty. At the next term others 
were tried, and many more pleaded guilty. In 
the other States the Courts are at work meting 
out justice. These are the offenders in whose 
behalf Wade Hampton and others raised money 
and employed counsel. 

Reverdy Johnson and Henry Stanbery were 
the counsel, and I read a passage from Mr. 
Johnson's argument to the jury : 

But Mr. Attorney-General has remarked, and would 
have you suppose, that my friend and myself are here to 
defend, to justify, or to palliate the outrages that may 
have been perpetrated in your State by this association 
of Ku-klux. He makes a great mistake as to both of us. I 
have listened with unmixed horror to some of the testi- 
mony which has been brought before you. The outrages 
proved are shocking to humanity ; they admit of neither 
excuse nor justification : they violate every obligation 
which law and nature impose upon man ; they show that 
the parties engaged were brutes, insensible to the obliga- 
tion of humanity and religion. 

The action of Congress and the President has 
put an end to much of this bloody business ; 
but stopping murder is called " centralism," and 

we are being stoned for that. 

SOUTHERN STATE GOVERNMENTS — AMNESTY. 

The South has been for years a fertile field 
for electioneering sensations. The State Gov- 
ernments in some of the Southern States have 
been weak and bad, and the " Liberals " want 
to try us for that. What have we to do with 
it ? Why, they say we imposed political disa- 
bilities on the rebels. Who imposed political 
disabilities on rebels? We are told the people 
pay the debt, but we never hear that the peo- 
ple imposed the disabilities ; yet they did. The 
Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, 
ratified by the Legislatures of three-quarters of 
the States, is the disability under which rebels 
have been. That amendment does not touch 
the right to vote, but leaves every rebel a voter. 
It touches only the right to hold office. It pro- 



vides that the men who took an oath to support 
the Constitution, and then fought against it, 
thus adding perjury to treason, shall not hold 
office ; and it further provides that Congress, 
by a two-third vote, may relieve them. It is 
foolish to pretend, all being allowed to vote, 
that the majority could not rule ; it is absurd to 
pretend that the few rebels, who are perjured 
as well as traitors, were the only fit men to 
elect State officers and legislators. It follows 
that the Fourteenth Amendment is not the cause 
of bad men being elected to office in the Southern 
States. The truth is, as was abundantly proved 
before the Ku-Klux Committee, that capable, 
educated men, eligible to office, refused to ac- 
cept it, and refused to vote, and persuaded the 
rebels generally not to vote, all for the purpose 
of frustrating reconstruction in the South, and 
making it odious. 

Amnesty or want of amnesty had nothing to 
do with jobs in Southern Legislatures, any 
more than in our own. No man has ever asked 
to be relieved who has not been relieved prompt- 
ly ; indeed, history has no instance of such for- 
bearance and mercy as has been granted to the 
ringleaders of rebellion. 

Not one was ever visited with the least pen- 
alty, except being barred from office, for com- 
mitting perjury as well as treason, and bills for 
relief began at once, and all who asked soon re- 
ceived forgiveness. Whether a general act, nam- 
ing no one, but covering rebels in a body, was a 
compliance with the Fourteenth Amendment, 
may well be doubted ; be this as it may, the 
President recommended, and Congress on the 
2 1st of last May adopted, such an act. It would 
have passed weeks earlier, but that "Liberals" 
who pretended to be for a " Civil Rights bill " 
by itself, voted avowedly to make it as obnoxious 
as possible, and then, when it became part of 
the Amnesty bill, some of them voted against it 
and others dodged — and this when two votes 
would have carried it. And now, when not 
more than one or two hundred men in the whole 
South are left ineligible to office, and these are 
men who still defy and spurn the Constitution, 
we are gravely told that "amnesty " is a great 
issue before the American people. 

Amnesty, as an issue, is as dead as the politi- 
cians who prate about it. It is about as vital 
as Mr. Sumner's published reason for supporting 
Mr. Greeley, namely, that Greeley was born 
the same year that he was himself. 

"Peace, good will toward men," have been 
for three years national watch-words. Even the 
old Indian scares have failed to bring on Indian 
wars, which were always contractors' wars. For 
the first time in our history an Indian peace pol- 
icy has triumphed, massacres have been prevent- 
ed, the whites and the Indians alike have been 
spared, and millions saved to the nation. 

WHY CHANGE?— WHO ASKS IT? 

Such is the Administration, and such the 
stable prosperity and the wholesome condition 
of things, ai home and abroad, which we are 
asked to trade off for we know not what. To 
suppose it will be done would be to brand free 
government as a failure, and to insult the sense 
of the American people. 



24 



The President and His Slanderers. 



What is the change offered us ? Does any- 
body know ? When did the necessity for any 
change arise? Certainly not when in Septem- 
ber, 1870, Mr. Greeley called the Reform 
movement " a conspiracy to destroy the Repub- 
lican party;" not in September, 1871, when 
Mr. Greeley drew resolutions fully endorsing 
the present Administration; not on the 5th of Jan- 
uary, 1S71, when in a speech Mr. Greeley said, 
" I venture to suggest that Gen. Grant will be 
far better qualified for that momentous trust in 
1872 than he was in 1868 ;" not when in Feb- 
ruary, 1871, Mr. Greeley said that a defeat of 
the Republican party in the nation would be a 
"disgrace and humiliation " ; not only a year 
ago, when Mr. Greeley said: 

When a Republican Convention, fairly chosen after 
free consultation and the frank interchange of opinion, 
shall have nominated Republican candidates for Presi- 
dent and Vice-President, wc shall expect to urge all Re- 
publicans to give them a hearty, effective support, whe- 
ther they be or be not of those whose eriginal preference 
has been gratified. 

Not on the 25th of April, 1872, when Mr. 
Greeley placed his hostility to President Grant 
squarely and solely on the ground of certain ap- 
pointments in the City of New York. 

Who were the discoverers of the need of a 
change? Who called the Cincinnati Convention? 
Did the business men of the country call it? 
Did the public-spirited, the unselfish, and the 
patriotic call it ? Every one knows that it was 
the work of the political "outs." A few re- 
spectable men were drawn in, but the great body 
of the movers were, as Greeley used to say of 
the Democrats, "the very scum " of politics. 

Nearly every man whose name appeared was 
either a disappointed office-seeker, a man with 
a grievance, or a man of bad character. Such a 
"reform" movement will never be seen again, 
unless the disreputable women of the lasd 
should strike and start a "liberal" movement 
to reform the virtuous women of the land. 
There is an effrontery bordering the sublime in 
professional corruptionists, the worst and most 
notorious, starting up to berate honest people. 
From such effrontery came a convention, which, 
from beginning to end, was managed to cheat 
and defraud the respectable men who were 
drawn into it and the public generally. That 
the nomination was bartered and bellowed 
through we are assured by the best who were 
present; and now the Democratic party has 
died by its own hand, and gone for eternal pun- 
ishment to Horace Greeley. 

MR. GREELEY AND HIS "CLAIMS." 

An examination of the fitness of Mr. Greeley, 
and his claims to public confidence, is the duty 
of every citizen. That he has shown great 
talent as an editor and writer, all admit, but 
nearly all else claimed for him now, I deny. 
The very talents he has shown un§t him for the 
i'i idency. 

It is said that a greal debt is due and unpaid 
by the Republican party to Mr. Greeley. The 
account stands very differently, as most persons 
understand it. 

Does not Mr, Greeley owe much to the Re- 
publican party? That party gave him wealth, 
fame and influence. His talent and industry 



were his own ; but the Tribune was sustained 
as a party organ, and was made a mine of 
wealth by the Republican party. Who does 
not know that Republicans, whether private 
citizens or postmasters, or other "office-holders," 
or country editors, or committee-men, have made 
common cause for years for the Tribune, have 
organized clubs, pushed and begged for subscrip- 
tions, and made the Tribune what it was? 

Who does not know that this year tens of 
thousands of Republicans paid their money in 
advance for the Tribune, while yet its claws 
were half concealed, holding itself out as a 
Republican paper, and that the money thus ob- 
tained by false pretense is kept to sustain the 
paper in its present gross and knavish course. 
Who does not know that the position given 
Mr. Greeley by the Republican party, did more 
than all else to make the sale of his book called 
the "American Conflict," which is said to have 
paid him more than a hundred thousand dollars. 
He sent canvassers to solicit subscribers for this 
book, and who subscribed, who paid him a 
fortune for it ? Was it the Democrats or the 
no-party men, or was it those to whom he now 
says "he owes nothing?" 

It is true that Mr. Greeley has seldom been 
intrusted with office, though he has long sought 
office from the Whig and Republican parties. 
This, however, is simply from want of confidence 
in his practical judgment and consistency. 

Prior to 1854, Mr. Greeley's extreme craving 
for office was not understood, and his letter to 
Gov. Seward, November II, 1854, dissolving 
the "political firm of Seward, Weed & Greeley," 
because office had not been given him, amazed 
the public. 

In this letter, after referring to some of the 
offices he wanted from the Whig party, and 
upbraiding Gov. Seward for not appointing him 
to some office in 1837, he says : 

Now came the great scramble of the swell-mob of 
coon minstrels and cider-suckers at Washington, I not 
being counted in. Several regiments of them went on 
from this city ; but no one of the whole crowd — though 
I say it who should not — had done so much toward Gen. 
Harrison's nomination and election as yours respectfully. 
I asked nothing, expected nothing ; but yon, Gov. Sew- 
ard, ought to have asked that I be Postmaster of New 

Let me speak of the late canvass. I was once sent 
to Congress for ninety days, merely to enable Jim Brooks 
to secure a seat therein for four years. 

******* 

But this last Spring, after the Nebraska question had 
created a new state of things at the North, one or two 
personal friends, of no political consideration, suggested 
my name as a candidate for Governor, and I did not dis- 
courage them. * * * * 

I am sure Weed did not mean to humiliate me, but he 
did it. The upshot of his discourse (very cautiously 
stated) was this : if I were a candidate for Governor, I 
should beat not myself only but you. Perhaps that was 
true. But, as I had in no manner solicited his or your 
support, I thought this might have been said to my friends 
rather than to me. I suspect it is true that I could not 
have been elected Governor as a Whig. But had he and 
you been favorable, there would have been a party in 
the State, ere this, which could and would have elected 
me to any post, without injuring myself or endangering 
your election. 

It was in vain that I urged that I had in no manner 
asked a nomination. At length. I was nettled by his 
language — well intended, but very cutting, as addressed 
by him to me — to say, in substance, "Well, then, make 
Patterson Governor, and try my name for Lieutenant. 
To lose this place is a matter of no importance, and we 
can see whether I am really so odious." 



Senator Co/iMintfs Great Speech at New York. 



Having quoted from the early letters of Presi- 
dent Grant, it seems but fair that I should read 
from an early effusion of Mr. Greeley's also, and 
beside, I want you to see how the keenest men 
in the Whig Party regarded Mr. Greeley's aspira- 
tions and qualifications. Job once expressed a 
wish that his "adversary had written a book"; 
■ — had Mr. Greeley been the adversary then, a 
letter would have satisfied Job just as well. 

While he belonged to the Republican Party, 
Mr. Greeley was a candidate for Governor several 
times, for Senator, for Representative, and for 
other offices ; always being defeated in the nom- 
ination or election, except when once chosen for 
a ninety-days term in Congress, when made Presi- 
dential elector in 1864, and when he ran for the 
Constitutional Convention under a law insuring 
his election, without regard to the number of 
votes. 

WHAT MR. GREELEY DID WHEN IN OFFICE. 

The Republican Party has been blamed for 
not gratifying Mr. Greeley's ambition for office, 
but the mass of the party, though appreciating 
his eccentric genius, has believed him erratic, 
and not possessed of the practical wisdom, mod- 
eration, or business capacity to make a useful or 
safe official. As often as he has been tried in 
public station he has failed. His brief career 
in Congress was a sad fiasco ; he more than 
once excused his course by saying that he voted 
without understanding the question, and had 
voted as he did not mean to. (Congressional 
Globe, 1848-49, vol. 20, pp. 269, 336). He in- 
volved himself in questions of veracity, which 
compelled him to retreat from his statements ; 
and on one occasion was confronted on the 
floor by members, who flatly testified to the 
untruthfulness of what he said. (Globe, as 
above.) Libels, published in his paper, sub- 
jected him to indignities, and even to worse 
embarrassments. 

His course in the Constitutional Convention 
was a series of peevish attempts to assume 
everything and do everything, and resulted in 
his impatiently and prematurely quitting his 
post, after pouring upon members a volley of 
oaths. Even the task of acting as chairman of 
a local committee, last year, brought him into 
dilemmas and apparent breaches of his word, 
which a man of common discretion would have 
avoided. 

His affiliations with men have shown him a 
poor judge of human nature, and the ease with 
which the designing impose upon him has always 
excited the sympathy of his friends. The worst 
men have stuck to him and used him, with no 
more power on his part to shake them off than 
a ship has to shake off its barnacles. His man- 
agement of every business, except editing a news- 
paper, has shown him wanting in business capa- 
city ; and as an editor he has always lacked a 
balance wheel to keep him from absurd incon- 
sistencies. 

His investments of money with the shiftless 
and the dishonest ; his embarking in ventures 
with Tweed, and lending his name to men un- 
worthy of trust, can be excused only on the 
ground of want of sound judgment. His Four- 
ierism, and Agrarianism, attest a mind given to 



vagaries like this : on one occasion he insisted 
that there could be no property in land, because 
property was the product of human labor, and 
that land, like air, belonged to God Almighty, 
and could not be owned by man. 

Building a barn where a man could not stand, 
and was washed away, planting turnips where 
turnips could not grow, trying to substitute cab- 
bages for tobacco, and then assuming to teach 
farmers in all the varying climates and soils of 
the continent, what to raise, and how to plow, 
and when to hoe, can only pass as the grotesque 
and harmless antics of a man of oddities, flat- 
tered by many, and most of all by himself. 
" A jack of all trades is master of none," and 
"what he knows about farming," would show 
Mr. Greeley a universal genius, if it were not 
for what he could learn from those he assumes 
to teach. 

The overweening confidence with which he 
holds his opinions, and the rude vehemence with 
which he utters them, make the suddenness 
with which he changes them the plainest proof 
of insincerity or unsoundness ; while the epithets 
and libels with which he pursues those he hates 
or envies, shows a strangely unchristian and un- 
bridled nature. 

Mr. Greeley's own traits of character, as seen 
by his party associates, have made it better for 
him and for the public that he should not hold 
office, and when Andrew Johnson nominated 
him after he bailed Jefferson Davis, as Minister 
to Austria, rumor is greatly at fault if Senators 
who now support him, even all those who then 
belonged to the Republican party, could be in- 
duced to vote for his confirmation. 

Truthful history will never record that when 
Horace Greeley deserted the Republican Party 
for a Presidential nomination, lie owed the party 
nothing ; or that the party owed him a great 
and unpaid debt ; or that the party was wrong 
in not selecting such a man for high public 
trusts. The verdict will be rather that he spoke 
like a scheming ingrate, when on the 1 2th of 
June, 1871, he said to a street audience, "I 
am perfectly willing to pass receipts with the 
Republican Party, and say that our accounts 
are now settled and closed." 

MR. GREELEY'S RECORD — DID HE HELP SE- 
CESSION. 

Mr. Greeley's deeds are all to be found ia 
words. His record has not been written for him 
by false and hostile hands ; he has written it 
himself. How far it is the record of a man fit to 
be trusted, in peace and possibly war, with the 
affairs of this great nation, will appear sufficiently 
without going back of the rebellion. 

In i860 Mr. Lincoln was elected, and before 
he was inaugurated seven States seceded from 
the Union. They did not secede believing that 
the twenty-one millions of the North would de- 
ny their right, and desolate their land by war. 
Common sense proves that they relied upon a 
divided sentiment in the Northern States. 

They thought the Democratic party, in part 
at least, would maintain their right ; and they 
thought also with good reason, that the Repub- 
lican party could not be brought to coerce them, 
or make war upon them. This expectation of 



26 



Tlie President and Ills Slanderers. 



sympathy in the North while the Gulf States 
were hesitating, turned the scales in favor of se- 
cession ; and no man in all the land did, or 
could do, so much as Horace Greeley to create 
the expectation upon which secession took place. 
The New York Tribune was at that time the 
leading Republican organ, and beyond and 
above all other papers, it spoke for the Repub- 
lican party. Its editor claimed the credit of 
having just overthrown Gov. Seward at Chicago, 
and this, for the time being, completed its su- 
premacy in the Republican party. Holding 
this position of unchallenged authority, hear 
what it said to men not yet daring to plunge into 
the Red Sea of Revolution. 

The election returns in 1S60 had not come 
in when the Tribune began to incite secession. 
On the 9th of November, i860, Horace Greeley 
published this editorial. : 

And now. if the Cotton States consider the value of 
the Union debatable, we maintain their perfect right to 
discuss it. Nay, we hold with Jefferson to the inalien- 
able right of communities to alter or abolish forms of 
government that have become oppressive or injurious ; 
and if the Cotton States shall decide that they can do 
better out of the Union than in it, we insist on letting 
them go in peace. The right to secede may be a revo- 
lutionary one, but it exists nevertheless ; and we do not 
see how one party can have a right to do what another 
party has a right to prevent. We must ever resist the 
asserted right of any State to remain in the Union, and 
nullify or defy the laws thereof : to withdraw from the 
Union is quite another matter. And, whenever a con- 
siderable section of our Union shall deliberately resolve 
to go out, we shall resist all coercive measures designed 
to keep it in. We hope never to live in a Republic 
whereof one section is pinned to the residue by bayonets. 

On the 17th of December, i860, just before 
South Carolina seceded, South Carolina being 
the first State to go, Mr. Greeley published the 
following editorial : 

We have repeatedly asked those who dissent from our 
views of this matter to tell us frankly whether they do or 
do not assent to Mr. Jefferson's statement in the De- 
claration of Independence that Governments "derive 
their just powers from the consent of the governed ; and 
that whenever any form of government becomes destruc- 
tive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or 
abolish it, and to institute a new government," &c, &c. 
We do heartily accept this doctrine, believing it intrins- 
ically sound, beneficent, and one that, universally ac- 
cepted, is calculated to prevent the shedding of seas of 
human blood. And if it justified the secession from the 
British Empire of three millions of colonists in 1776, we 
do not see why it would not justify the secession of 
five millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 
1861. If we are mistaken on this point, why does not 
some one attempt to show wherein and why ? For our 
own part, while we deny the right of slave-holders to 
hold slaves against the will of the latter, we cannot see 
how twenty millions of people can rightfully hold ten or 
even five, in a detested Union with them by military 
force. 

****** 

We could not stand up for coercion, for subjugation, 
for we do no: think it would be just. We hold the right 
of self-government sacred, even when evoked in behalf 
of those who deny it to other.-,. So much for the ques- 
tion of principle. 

****** 

We fully realize that the dilemma of the incoming Ad- 
ministration will be a critical one. It must endeavor to up- 
hold and enforce lb : laws as well against rebellion 

I ! 11 ■ ■ President must fulfil the 
obligati ui-i assumed in his inauguration oath, no matter 
how shamefully his predecessor may have defied them, We 
fear that Southern madness may precipitate a bloody 

that all must deplore. But if ever "seven or 
eight States" send agents to Washington to say, "We 
want to go out of the Union," we shall feel constrained 
by devotion to human liberty to say, let them go ! And 
ive do not see how we could take the other side, without 



coming in direct conflict with those rights of man whirh. 
we hold paramount to all political arrangements, how- 
ever convenient and advantageous. 

On the 24th of December, i860, Mr. Greeley 
published the following editorial : 

Most certainly we believe that Governments are made 
for peoples, not peoples for Governments— that the " lat- 
ter derive their just power from the consent of the gov- 
erned :" and whenever a portion of this Union, large 
enough to form an iri&ependent, self-subsisting nation, 
shall see fit to say authentically to the residue, "We 
want to get away from you," we shall sav— and we 

TRCST SELF-RESPECT, IF NOT REGARD FOR THE 
PRINCIPLE OF SELF-GOVERNMENT, WILL CONSTRAIN 
THE RESIDUE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE TO SAY— 

"go!" We never yet had so poor an opinion of our- 
selves or our neighbors as to wish to hold others in a 
hated connection with us. 

Two months later, Feb. 23, 1861, five days 
after the inauguration of Jeff. Davis as Presi- 
dent, Mr. Greeley published the following 
editorial : 

We have repeatedly said, and weonce more insist, that 
the great principle embodied by Jefferson in the Dec- 
laration of American Independence, that Governments 
derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, 
is sound and just ; and that if the slave Statfs, 

THE COTTON STATES, OR THE GULF STATES ONLY, 
CHOOSE TO FORM AN INDEPENDENT NATION THEY 
HAVE A CLEAR MORAL RIGHT TO DO SO. We have 

said, and still maintain, that, provided the Cotton States 
have fully and definitely made up their minds to go by 
themselves, there is no need of fighting about 
it ; for they have only to exercise reasonable patience, 
and they will be let off in peace and goodwill. When- 
ever it shall be clear that the r-reat body of Southern 
people have become conclusively alienated from the 
Union, and anxious to escape from it, WE WILL DO OUR 
BEST TO FORWARD THEIR VIEWS. 

Are not these manifestoes sickening when we 
remember the furious cries of war by which 
they were followed ? Can any man doubt the 
great part they played in fomenting secession 
and stimulating rebellion ? When Alexander 
H. Stephens, in the Georgia Convention, which 
passed the ordinance of secession, attempted to 
stem, the secession tide, Robert Toombs put 
him down, and carried the Convention, by 
reading these Tribune articles. Union men who 
resisted secession were silenced throughout the 
South by these and similar quotations from Mr. 
Greeley ; the Tribune became the hand-book 
to "fire the Southern heart." 

FRANK BLAIR'S TESTIMONY AGAINST MR. 
GREELEY. 
I do not ask Democrats to take my word for 
this ; let me call their last candidate for Vice- 
President to the stand, and make him testify. 
Here is what Gen. I* rank P. Blair said in the 
Senate, P'ebruary 17, 1871, when explaining 
how secession gained the upper hand in the 
South : 

We all know the instance of a very distinguished man, 
Alexander PL Stephens. We :ill know that, as a mem- 
ber of the Georgia Convention, he contended with 
eloquence and ability in favor of the Government of the 
United States ; and I have been informed that the only re- 
ply which was made to that eloquent appeal of his to 
support the Government was the reading, by Mr. 
Toombs, of a paragraph from the New York Tribune, in 
which it was declared that it the Southern people chose 
to secede they had as much right to separate themselves 
from the Northern Slates .> , our ancestors had in 1776 to 
separate themselves from the mother country. 

That paragraph did appear in the Tribune, and every 
Senator here will bear it in Ins recollection. I remember 
to have seen it, and I remember the discouragement 
which fell upon us in Missouri and throughout the other 



Senator Coupling's Great Speech at New York. 



27 



Southern States where Union men were attempting to 
band themselves together and ti> maintain the Govern- 
ment, when it was announced by that paper, a leading 
paper in the Republican party at that time, that the Se- 
cessionists had as much right to separate themselves 
from the Northern States as had our ancestors in 1776 to 
abandon the mother country. 

****** 

I remark upon the case of Mr. Stephens, who was a 
zealous friend of the Union, who spoke in the Georgia 
Convention ably and eloquently against the secession of 
his State, and who was responded to in that Convention 
simply by the reading of a p iragraph from the New York 
Tribune, which was at much as to say that they had 
nothing to apprehend from the North if they decided to 
go out 0/ the Union, because here was one of the leaders 
of the Republican party of the North announcing to 
them that if they desired to go out they could do so, and 
had as much right to do Si> as our forefathers had to 
separate themselves from the mother country. 

Mr. Howard -May I ask the Senator from Missouri 
whether, in his opinion, the paragraph in the New York 
Tribune to which he refers was a justification, in whole 
or in part, for the treason of Mr, Stephens? 

Mr. Blair — I will reply that I do not consider that 
anything justifies treason, and I do not think the conduct 
of the Secessionists of the South justified that traitorous 
expression of opinion on the part of the Tribune, for I 
regard it as traitorous. I say, Sir, that it did as much 
to discourage the efforts of the Union men in the South 
as anything that occurred at that period. It was simply 
a declaration which those accepted, I suppose, and were 
glad to accept, who wished to rid themselves of the 
Union, that they might go out in peace, that they would 
not be pursued, that war would not follow their step ; and 
this did a great deal to prevent resistance on the part of the 
Union men at the South at the time to the establishment 
of the de facto Government to which they were subjected. 
— Congressional Globe, Part 2, 3d Session 41st Congress ; 
PP- 1.344, 1.345- 

These statements, made by Gen. Blair, created 
some sensation. The Tribune tried to break 
their force, and on the 20th of February, 1 87 1, 
Gen. Blair returned to the charge prepared with 
proof. Here is what he said : 

When speaking on this subject the other day, I gave 
from memory certain deductions of the New York Tri- 
bune, then as now the most influential organ of public 
opinion in the Republican party in this country, and 
spoke of the unhappy influence of this paper at that 
time, in giving encouragement to the Secessionists and 
in discouraging the efforts of the Union men in the 
South. ***** 

I now quote the extracts from that paper to which I 
referred, and the Senate and the country can judge 
whether my statement or that of the Senator is the cor- 
rect one. On the 9th of November, i860, the New York 
Tribune said : 

[Here he read some of the articles already 
quoted, and resumed :] 

Mr. Stephens, of Georgia, and many others who have 
since been disfranchised, breasted the storm with heroic 
courage. Regardless of popularity, and thinking only of 
the peace and happiness of the country, they struggled 
against secession, and warned the people of the disaster 
they would encounter. On the other hand, Mr. Greeley 
assured them these dangers were all imaginary, and in- 
sisted that "they should go in peace," that they had a 
clear "moral right to go." 

****** 

Words were never uttered mire fatal than these to the 
peace of the country. Mr. Stephens was defeated in his 
effort to prevent secession in Georgia by a few votes only, 
and nothing is more certain than that these were obtained 
by Mr. Greeley's declaration that secession was rightful 
and would be peaceable. I have been informed that 
these declarations were read in the Georgia Convention 
as a full reply to the warnings of Mr. Stephens. The 
refusal of Georgia would undoubtedly have arrested the 
movement. Who, then, is more directly responsible than 
Mr. Greeley, and those who acted with him at the 
North, for the blood which has drenched this land ; and 
who is more directly responsible than Mr. Greeley for the 
vindictive spirit which animates the dominant party in 
the proscription which has pursued and is still pursuing 
the whole people of the South ? 

Nor was Mr. Greeley's reiterated advice the result of 



an honest error. No man understood better than he 
did the" use that would be made of hi : da I. nations, and 
how effective they would be in promoting di 1 union. 

The editor of the Tribune 1 opi rati d with the seces- 
sion movement, not because he sympathised with the ob- 
jects of its authi irS, but because he and t ho, e for whom 
he spoke preferred parting with the South t'> partnership 
and equality under the Constitution. -Congressional 
Globe, same volume ; pp. 1,426, 1,427. 

Whoever reads Mr. Greeley's utterances, now 
in question, will see that he assumed to give 
advice in a supreme public emergency ; that at 
the critical and vital point, which must decide 
between union and disunion, between peace and 
war, Mr. Greeley threw his whole weight and 
influence on the fatal side. He upheld the full 
right of secession ; he denied the whole right 
of coercion ; he insisted that slaves fleeing from 
masters in arms agaitist the Government must 
be captured and returned ; and he protested 
against the continuance of the Union, after 
force was needed to preserve it. 

MR. GREELEY ORGANIZES VICTORY. 

Advancing to the next step in Mr. Greeley's 
career, we find him on the war-path. 

Mr. Lincoln had called for troops, and youths 
untrained and untaught in war, and unseasoned 
to hardships, flocked to Washington. General 
Scott, then the oldest and foremost soldier of 
the Republic, was in command. He had around 
him all the men whom the nation had educated 
as soldiers, except those who forsook the flag, 
and in the judgment of them all, lime was need- 
ed to drill men and horses, before ventur- 
ing an onward movement upon an entrenched 
and fortified foe. Mr. Greeley, an editor, who 
had never seen a battle, or studied a campaign, 
or learned anything of war, assumed the office 
of dictator. With his great engine, the Tribune, 
he fanned the flame of popular impatience and 
overbore the authority and the judgment of 
military men by a hurricane of clamor for an 
instant movement. "On to Richmond !" daily 
clanged out with great shocks of sound from the 
Tribune, and drove the army headlong to Bull 
Run. 

Men who had not learned to limber or unlim- 
ber guns, and horses unbroken to manoeuvre 
artillery, were driven pell mell upon the masked 
battery of the rebels. James S. Wadsworth 
had gathered up many of these green horses, on 
the spur of the occasion, and paid for them 
himself. Wadsworth went with them to the 
fated field, and there, bareheaded, with his 
white locks streaming in the winds, tried by 
heroic daring to supply the want of drill. But 
patriotism, and bravery, and dash, would not 
avail; the attack was premature — "some one 
had blundered" — a meddler had blundered, and 
had wrecked an army. 

"On to Richmond " was the incarnation of 
conceit and folly, as it was the slogan of head- 
long war ; and yet it was the shout of the same 
man who, a few short weeks before, by the cry 
of secession and of anti-coercion, had lured and 
bated millions with mad hopes and promises. 

Let me read you the motto flung out by the 
Tribune July 1st, 2d, 3d, and 4th, the order for Bull 
Run : 

Thf Nation's War-Cry ! Forward to Richmond • 
Forward to Richmond ! The Rebel Congress must not 



28 



TJie President and JUs Slanderers. 



be allowed to meet there on the 20th of July ! By that 
date the place must be held by the national 
Army. 

On. the 1st of July, twenty days before Bull 
Run, Mr. Greeley cast upon Gen. Scott the im- 
putation of treason to his flag, in these words : 

"Did you pretend to know more about military matters 
than General Scott r" asked a few knaves, whom a great 
many simpletons know no better than to echo. 

"No, sir! we know very little of the art of war, 
and Gen. Scott knows a great deal. There is no ques- 
tion on this point and never has been." 

The real question which the above is asked only to 
shuffle out of sight -is this : Docs Gen. Scott (or whoever 
it may be) contemplate the same ends, and is he ani- 
mated by like impulses and purposes with the great 
body 0/ the loyal, liberty-loving people 0/ this country ? 
Does he stand up square on the line of 54 deg. 40 min., 
or is he squinting towards 36 deg. 30 min. ? Does he 
want the rebels routed, or would he prefer to have them 
conciliated ? When you answer these questions, you 
touch the marrow of the problem, which all the gas about 
Gen. Scott's military knowledge and our want of it is in- 
tended to dodge. 

ATTEMPTS TO SHIFT BLAME TO OTHERS. 

When tidings came of the defeat and carnage 
at Bull Run, Mr. Greeley sank under the weight 
of his fearful responsibility. The first symptom 
of recovering his self-possession was a frothy 
effort to lay the blame at the door of others. 
On the 23d of July, two days after the 
battle, he said : 

We have fought and been beaten. God forgive our 
rulers that this is so, b it it is true, and cannot be dis- 
guised. The Cabinet, recently expressing in rhetoric 
better adapted to a love-letter, a fear of being drowned 
in its own honey, is now nearly drowned in gore; while 
our honor on the high seas has only been saved by one 
daring and desperate negro, and he belonging to the 
merchant marine. The "sacred soil" of Virginia is 
crimson and wet with the blood of thousands of Northern 
men, needlessly shed. The great and universal question 
pervading the public mind is : " Shall this condition of 
things continue?" 

A decim ited and indignant people will demand the 
immediate retirement of the present Cabinet from the 
high places of power, which, for one reason or another, 
they have shown themselves incompetent to fill. Give 
us for the President capable advisers, who comprehend 
the requirements of the crisis, and are equal to them ; 
and for the army, leaders worthy of the rank and file, 
and our banner, now drooping, will soon float once more 
in triumph over the whole land. With the right men to 
lead, our people will show themselves unconquerable. 

Caught and impaled in this attempt to roll 
his own guilt upon the shoulders of others, here 
is his next explanation. Observe how, on the 
27th of July, he coddles up to Gen. Scott, whom 
he had tried to dishonor less than four weeks 
before : 

We have confessed our own terrible mistake in the 
premises, and arc trying to amend it. Gen. Scott has 
been equally ingenuous and candid. " It was a miscal- 
culation of forces," he says of the recent disaster. That 
is the real truth. None of us had any idea of the im- 
mense numbers and tremendous enginery of war that the 
rebels had silently collected around their position at 
Manassas Junction. Whoever ordered or planned the 
attack on that position was utterly unaware of their 
strength. 

See again, how, eighteen months later, he 
sought in another way to lay the ghost of Bull 
Run : 

I did urge that the great Union Army, rotting in idle- 
ness and debauchery about Washington, should advance 
upon the rebellion it was called out to put down. It 
have '1 >ne SO .1 m >nth earlier than it did — not a 
part of it, but the whole, and it might have bean tri- 
umphantly in Richmond, and the rebellion half sup- 
pressed before the day of Bull Run. How needless, 



how wanton, was that disaster — how disgraceful to those 
who might and should have prevented it, history will 
establish. — Tribune, Feb. 2, 1863. 

This is not all of this lamentable record — it 
contains yet other pitiable things, but these 
will do. 

It was in the agony of a later hour, tortured 
by dire meddling again, that Lincoln is said 
to have exclaimed, "What will quiet Horace 
Greeley, he gives me more distress, and does 
the country more harm than Jefferson Davis." 

How Mr. Greeley's interference tortured Mr. 
Lincoln, may be gathered from a letter written 
by Mr. Lincoln, Aug. 22, 1862. Here it is: 

Hon. Horace Greeley.— Dear Sir : I have just 
read yours of tbe 19th inst., addressed to myself through 
the New York Tribune. If there be in it any state- 
ments or assumptions of fact which I may know to be 
erroneous, I do not now and here controvert them. If 
there be any inferences which I may believe to be falsely 
drawn, I do not now and here argue against them. If 
there be perceptible in it an impatient and dictatorial 
tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend whose heart 
I have always supposed to be right. As to the policy I 
" seem to be pursuing," as you say, I have not meant to 
leave any one in doubt. * * * 

NIAGARA FALLS "PEACE NEGOTIATIONS." 

Mr. Greeley, early in Mr. Lincoln's Admin- 
istration, became his enemy. This Mr. Lin- 
coln knew and was ever on his guard. This is 
noticeable in the Niagara Falls peace affair. 
Mr. Greeley had been for secession when seces- 
sion might have been avoided, he had been for 
battle when the time had not come, he had 
been in turn for war and peace when each was 
impossible, and early in 1864, when the rebel- 
lion was about to collapse, and when everything 
depended upon keeping the North erect with 
united and undaunted front, Mr. Greeley fell 
into a swoon of despondency and blamed our 
authorities for not trying to make peace. 

From the beginning of the war, Canada has 
been the refuge of the spies, detectives, and 
hangers-on of the rebellion. On the 5th of 
July, 1864, one W. Cornell Jewett, an irre- 
sponsible and half insane adventurer, wrote Mr. 
Greeley a letter, saying that Geo. N. Sanders 
wanted him to come to Niagara Falls and hold 
a private interview with those authorized to 
make peace. Mr. Greeley, the day after he re- 
ceived the letter, wrote to Mr. Lincoln. His 
letter shows him full of the subject, and com- 
pletely persuaded that he had received a great 
and genuine revelation. He inclosed, ready- 
made, his "plan of adjustment." He was go- 
ing to wind up the whole rebellion by paying 
$40o,ooo,ooototheslaveStates, "loyal andseces- 
sion alike" for slaves, and by several other things, 
closing his plan with these words : "It may save 
us from a Northern insurrection. " In his Ietterhe 
said: "A wide-spread conviction that the Gov- 
ernment and its prominent supporters are not 
anxious for peace, and do not improve proffered 
opportunities to achieve it, is doing great harm 
now, and is morally certain, unless removed, to 
do far greater in the approaching elections." 
He also put in his letter exaggerated statements 
of the extremity to which the country had come, 
and appealed to Mr. Lincoln to enter into the 
negotiation. 

Mr. Lincoln saw through the whole thing at 



Senator Conklinc/s Great Speech at New York. 



29 



a glance ; lie saw that Mr. Greeley had been 
gulled, and he saw that he must humor him or 
rouse his ire. Accordingly he wrote to him as 
follows: "If you find any person, anywhere, 
professing to have any proposition of Jefferson 
Davis, in writing, for peace, embracing the res- 
toration of the Union and the abandonment of 
slavery, whatever else it embraces, say to him he 
may come to me with you," etc. Mr. Greeley 
replied, caviling with the President's letter, say- 
ing that they would not show their credentials, 
etc., and using these words : "Green as I may 
be, I am not quite so verdant as to imagine any- 
thing of the sort." 

Receiving no answer from the President, three 
days afterward, July 13, he wrote: "I have 
now information on which I can rely, that two 
persons duly commissioned, and empowered to 
negotiate for peace, are, at this moment, not far 
from Niagara Falls," etc. In this letter he ap- 
peals to Mr. Lincoln "to act in the premises, 
and to act so promptly that a good influence may 
even yet be exerted in the North Carolina elec- 
tion next month." 

Mr. Lincoln replied, "I am disappointed 
that you have not already reached here with 
those Commissioners. If they would consent to 
come on being shown my letter to you on the 
9th inst., show that and this to them, and if 
they will come on the terms stated in the former, 
bring them. I not only intend a sincere effort 
for peace, but I intend that you shall be a per- 
sonal witness that it is made. " 

Mr. Greeley applied for "safe conduct" for 
four persons, and this being granted, he set sail 
on his mission, never suspecting he was the 
victim of a fraud, and not seeing how Mr. Lincoln 
regarded it. 

HOW MR. LINCOLN WAS FALSELY PLACED. 

Reaching Niagara, he instantly put himself 
into communication with Sanders, Thompson & 
Co., who at once informed him that they had no 
authority whatever to make peace, or to talk 
about it, but they were pleased that the United 
States had at last come forward proposing terms; 
and they graciously offered Mr. Greeley, if the 
President would protect them, to go through the 
United States down to Richmond, and see what 
the rebels would do about it. Mr. Greeley, in 
place of denouncing the cheat and repelling the 
impertinence, and clearing the President's skirts 
by showing the two letters which he had been 
instructed to show, went into a correspondence 
with these brazen impostors. Learning what 
was going on, Mr. Lincoln dispatched a confi- 
dential messenger post haste with a document 
dated July 18, 1864, signed by himself and ad- 
dressed "To whom it may concern." This doc- 
ument stated that authorized propositions of 
peace would be fairly met, provided "the integ- 
rity of the whole Union and the abandonment 
of slavery " was embraced. The messenger, by 
order of the President, hastened to Niagara Falls, 
and, taking Mr. Greeley with him, crossed the 
river, and delivered the paper in his presence to 
the rebel tricksters. 

It contained exactly what the President di- 
rected Mr. Greeley to show them in the first in- 



stance, yet it was the first notice given them of 
the President 'sv,uc([uiiements. 
. Taking advantage of this concealment by Mr. 
Greeley, Thompson & Co. pretended to be taken 
by surprise, and wrote Mr. Greeley a long letter, 
full of insolent and electioneering denunciation 
of Mr. Lincoln and the Government. They 
stated that Mr. Greeley made the first advance 
to them, which they say "was accepted by us 
as the evidence of an unexpected but most grati- 
fying change in the policy of the President!" 
They further say, that they had believed "that 
this conciliatory manifestation on the part of the 
President of the United States would be met by 
them (Jeff. Davis & Co.) in a temper of equal 
magnanimity ! " They then denounced the Presi- 
dent for changing his mind, and not doing what 
Mr. Greeley had been led to expect. 

On receipt of this letter, in place of setting 
the President right, by telling them that from the 
beginning he had held throughout but one and 
the same position, Mr. Greeley left the Presided 
to rest under the imputation of bad faith. 

Before taking his departure, Mr. Greeley sent 
word to the rebel "Commissioners" "that he 
regrets the sad termination of the initiatory 
steps taken for peace, in consequence of the 
change made by the President" &c. No change 
had in truth been made by the President, and 
first and last there was no room to charge bad 
faith or a change of mind, excepting the false 
position in which Mr. Greeley had placed the 
President, by disobeying his instructions, and 
failing to exhibit his shrewd and guarded letter. 
When Mr. Lincoln came to know what had 
been done, feeling indignant at the way his con- 
fidence had been abused, he wrote to Mr. Gree- 
ley for permission to publish the correspondence, 
omitting only such points as carried an exag- 
gerated idea of our military and political condi- 
tion ; this request Mr. Greeley refused, unless 
all parts of the letters were published. Upon 
this conduct of Mr. Greeley, Mr. Lincoln com- 
mented in these words : "I have concluded that 
it is better for me to submit for the time to the 
consequences of the false position in which I 
consider he (Greeley) has placed me, than to 
subject the country to the consequences of pub- 
lishing these discouraging and injurious parts." 
After Mr. Lincoln's death these facts and 
letters all came out. Mr. Lincoln had delivered 
them in confidence to Mr. Raymond, who, in 
his life of Lincoln, exposes Mr. Greeley with a 
severity from which I abstain. 

But several things are undeniable. First, 
Mr. Greeley was gulled by a shallow swindle ; 
second, he not only bit at the bait, but pressed 
the matter upon Lincoln, in a manner showing 
his intention to carp at him unless he yielded to 
his views ; third, Lincoln punctured the fraud 
at a glance, and yet Greeley did not see it ; 
fourth, Greeley bungled the whole affair at 
Niagara, or else purposely violated the repeated 
instructions of the President ; fifth, he tamely 
submitted to the most unblushing effrontery and 
imposition from the rebels ; sixth, he expressly 
admitted and stated that Lincoln had been fickle 
or untruthful, when he knew he had not ; and, 
finally, when Lincoln sought to vindicate him- 



30 



The President and Ills Slanderers. 



self by making the truth public, Greeley stifled 
the truth by threatening if it was told, to publish 
matters having no bearing on the case, but 
which would deeply wound the public interest. 
Who can wonder that Mr. Stanton proposed 
the arrest of Mr. Greeley for holding unauthor- 
ized and injurious intercourse with the enemy? 

MR. GREELEY AS FINANCIER. 

War and diplomacy were not enough for Mr. 
Greeley, and he soon turned financier, and 
assumed to dictate the financial policy. He 
first opposed the Legal Tender act, but unex- 
pectedly came out in its favor, and continued to 
advocate paper money, until the channels of 
trade were glutted with it, and gold went up to 
2S0. To guard against injustice to Mr. Greeley, 
at this point let me read you his own words, on 
the ioth of February, 1S62 : 

" We shiver on the brink of a bottomless abyss of Shin- 
plaster circulation. Congress must provide funds for the 
vigorous and immediate prosecution of the war for the 
Union, and it seems to have been settled that it shall 
take the short and easy method of making treasury notes 
a legal tender. We utterly dissent from this conclusion," 
etc. 

After he had changed his mind, and as late 
as February 19, 1S64, he would charge sym- 
pathy with the rebellion upon a man who pp- 
posed greenbacks, or advocated specie payment. 
Here is an editorial of February 19th, 1864, in 
which Mr. Greeley says : 

"When, therefore, we hear that the Government ought 
to luxve Maintained, or ought now to resume, specie pay- 
ments, me know that the speaker means that it ought to 
give up the contest and let the rebels trhimph." 

With the vast issue of "Legal Tender" notes, 
business, of course, expanded, and merchandise 
and property were bought at double and treble 
their old prices, to be paid for in paper. In 
this condition of things Mr. Greeley violently 
demanded the resumption of specie payments. 
Practical men saw, as the event has proved, the 
wisdom of a gradual approach to a specie basis ; 
it was as certain then as it is now, that to com- 
pel payment in gold of debts contracted in 
paper worth less than half as much as gold, 
would be to strew our land with wreck and 
ruin. Moreover, it would have been impossible, 
without a miracle, for Government, banks, or 
people to pay specie when Mr. Greeley de- 
manded it. Men of sense everywhere cried out 
against such an attempt, and demanded to know 
how we could suddenly resume. Mr. Greeley 
was ready with answers. The chief answer was : 
" The way to resume is to resume !" On the 
I2th of January, 1866, he said that more "six 
per cent, untaxed bonds " should have been put 
out, and in that way, " every obstacle 01 1 'lie part 
0/ the treasury to an instant resumption should 
have been over come." 

On the 5th of June, 1867, he came out with 
this staggering programme. I commend it to 
free-traders, property owners, anti-income tax 
men, and all men blest with no better sense than 
common sense : 

We believe in taxing so as to pay tlie debt in ten 
years. To do this, the national revenue should be about 
$500,000,000 per annum, or the same as in 1866. Had 
it been kept there, we might have celebrated our country's 
centenary on the 4th of July, 1876, completely out of 
debt. And we hold that this might have been done, by 



taxing with steady purpose to diminish the number 0/ 
idlers, or uselessly employed persons, and increase the 
proportion of productive workers, without prejudice to 
the national growth or prosperity. Here, for example, 
are a good many thousands of our people who have in- 
comes of $10,000 up to $1,000,000 per annum. Suppose 
these were to pay ten per cent, income tax, what of it* 
They will live less sumptuously, or board less bounteously 
for a few years— that is all. They will still enjoy every 
comfort, and will be growing richer if they choose. 

Of late, Mr. Greeley has outrun everybody in 
denouncing the income tax ; but hear what he 
used to say. Here are his views, fune 10, 
1863 : 

One of the fairest and most productive sources of 
British revenue is the income tax assessed on all incomes 
in the United Kingdom above $750 per annum. Our 
corresponding tax exempts incomes from taxation to the 
amount of $600, but exacts three per cent, on all above 
that amount, and five per cent, on all excess over 
$10,000 per annum. In other words : "here is a tax 
which does not at all affect the laboring class, but 
which reaches nearly every one above them." 

Compare this with what he said Dec. 10, 
1869: 

We do not believe there is a tax levied by the Govern- 
ment so onerous upon so large a class of people as the 
income tax. It is not equal — its exactions are unjust ; 
and it discriminates against persons of limited means. 

Again, June 26, 1S69, he thus delivered him- 
self: 

The income tax is one of the worst ever levied, inquis- 
itorial, unequal, and offering a premium fur perjury. 
We trust its days are nearly numbered — that it will be 
the very next of our heavy war burdens removed. 

These are a few of the gems of Mr. Greeley's 
financial theories, and those who did not accept 
them were visited with epithets and reproach. 

I ask business men to look back now, and 
think what would have happened had Horace 
Greeley been President then. 

With this one passage before you, would you 
as business men, trust Mr. Greeley to run a 
cider mill and financier for it? 

In case of war, how all would lean on him as 
Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy. 
In case of a financial crisis how steady he would 
be. 

In case of riot in New York, or outbreak in 
the South, how his name would strike terror 
into babes and men. 

In case of storm, next to going to sea in a 
wash-tub, what would be so safe as the admin- 
istration of such a man ? 

He who changes his mind often, upon the 
greatest matters, should be tolerant of differences 
of opinion. 

HOW MR. GREELEY TREATS THOSE WHO 
DIFFER FROM HIM. 

See how Mr. Greeley deals with those who 
differ with him. Here are specimens of his 
editorials interesting to Democrats : 

All do know that there are several hundred thousand 
mulattoes in this country ; and we presume that no one 
has any serious doubt that the fathers of at least nine- 
tenths of them are white Democrats, and we are told 
that those Democrats, if they will have yellow children, 
might better than otherwise treat the mothers respect- 
ively as wives after the laudable pattern of that eminent 
Democrat, Vice-President Richard M. Johnson. — Dec. 
10, 1867. 

Every one who chooses to live by pugilism, or gamb- 
ling, or harlotry, with nearly every keeper of a tippling- 
house, is politically a Democrat, — Jan. 7, 1868. 



Senator ConMlng's Great Speech at New York. 






Point wherever you please to .in election district which 
you will pronounce morally rotten, given up in great 
part to debauchery and vice, whose voters subsist 
mainly by keeping policy offices, gambling houses, grog- 
shops and darker duns of infamy, and that district will 
be found at nearly or quite nearly every election giving 
a majority for that which styles itself the " Democratic" 
party. Take all the haunts of debauchery in the land, 
and you will find nine-tenths of their master-spirits 
active partisans of that same Democracy. What is the 
instinct, the sympathetic cord, which attaches them so 
uniformly to this party? Will you consider? 

We thereupon ask our contemporary to state frankly 
whether the pugilists, blacklegs, thieves, burglars, keep- 
ers of dens of prostitution, etc., etc., were not almost 
unanimously Democrats. 

A purely selfish interest attaches the lewd, ruffianly, 
criminal and dangerous classes to the Democratic party. 

♦This would amount to six in a bed, exclusive of any 
other vermin, for every Democratic couch in the State of 
New York, including those at Sing Sing aud Auburn. 

When the rebellious traitors are overwhelmed in the 
field and scattered like leaves before an angry wind, it 
must not be to return to peaceful and contented homes, 
they must find poverty at their firesides and privation in 
the anxious eyes of mothers and the rags of children ! 

MR. GREELEY AS A POLITICIAN. 

Eccentricity and fickleness are Mr. Greeley's 
traits. As a politician, he has bolted and ad- 
vised bolting ; he has opposed the nomination 
or election of every President who has been 
chosen for thirty years ; he has quarreled with 
every Administration ; he has assailed the char- 
acter of those he differed with wantonly and 
savagely ; he has imputed corruption to others 
merely for not voting or thinking as he did ; he 
sought by intrigue the defeat of Mr. Lincoln 
after he was nominated the second time, and as 
late as September 2, 1864, wrote secret letters, 
which have since come to light, to concoct mea- 
sures to prevent Lincoln's election ; he strove 
to poison President Grant against capable and 
honest Republicans, and advised him to exclude 
from his councils men trained in public affairs ; 
he has recommended unfit men for office, and 
insisted on their appointment ; after endorsing 
and applauding everything involving principle, 
or relating to the public interest done by the 
Administration, he has struck at the President 
on account of "patronage," and bolted the 
party, after manoeuvring more than a year to 
get its nomination. 

On the 4th of May, 1871, he wrote William 
Larmore, who had inquired whether he would 
be a candidate for President before the Republi- 
can Covention this year : " I fully propose also 
never to decline any duty or responsibility which 
my political friends see fit to devolve upon 
me," and having thus put himself in the field, 
he started for the South to make speeches, in 
one of which he asserted over again the right of 
secession, and in another hoped for the time 
when his countrymen would feel pride in Lee 
and Stonewall Jackson. 

He apologized for Tammany robbers, enjoy- 
ing from them at the same time an immense ad- 
vertising patronage, and blocking the wheels of 
reform after the Tammany frauds were known 
to the whole nation ; he colluded with men 
known to be in the interest of Tammany Hall, 
and whom he had previously so branded himself, 



to prevent the Republican party being purged 
of Tammany influence ; for two years b< f! 

open desertion, he sought to divide and destroy 
the Republican party of New York, and traduc- 
ed many upright men because of their resistance 
to the domination of corruptioriists ; and, finally, 
in signing the call for the Cincinnati Convention, 
which adopted the Free Trade Missouri Plat- 
form, he turned his back on the only political 
principle or idea prominent for the last ten years, 
of which he had not before been on both sides. 

CONCLUSION. 

Yot in the blind staggers of faction the Amer- 
ican people are challenged to scan and decide 
upon this record. 

Such a coalition, and such a nomination, 
mean chaos and disorder. You see this already 
in North Carolina, where the American Hag is 
showered with stale eggs, and where the mob 
refuses to allow honored citizens born there to 
'speak ; and you will see it at every step until the 
curtain falls in November. 

"Liberal Republican" movements have been 
tried in other States, and, until the results were 
felt, they succeeded. They tried in Virginia 
nominating a Republican for Governor, on a 
bargain with the Democrats; many Republicans 
were entrapped and Virginia is cursed with a 
rule which the best Democrats are ashamed of. 
They tried in West Virginia a fusion between 
"outs" and Democrats, and now West Virginia 
holds debate in her Constitutional Convention on 
the question of nullifying the Constitution of the 
United States, and depriving the blacks of the 
right to vote. They tried in Tennessee a move- 
ment of bolters and Democrats, and the result is 
the destruction of common schools, in which 
190,000 children were cultured. 

They tried the experiment in Missouri, and 
the fruit it bore is a Democratic State Govern- 
ment and Frank Blair in the Senate. 

In all these cases, one side or the other was 
cheated, and the public interest was harmed, 
and now it is proposed to attempt the same 
thing on a national scale. 

No wonder that leading Democratic journals 
and a large body of Democrats refuse to be 
parties to such chicanery, and no wonder that 
it draws to itself, as no other movement ever 
did, the very worst elements, North and South. 
The issue stands before you. On the one 
side is safe, tried and stable Government; peace 
with all nations, and prosperity at home, with 
business thriving, and debt and taxes melting 
away. 

On the other side is a hybrid conglomeration 
made up of the crotchets, distempers, and per- 
sonal aims of restless and disappointed men. 
What ills might come of committing to them 
the affairs of the nation no judgment can fathom, 
no prophecy can foretell. 

The result is very safe, because it rests with 
the same generation which was given by Provi- 
dence to see through the darkness of the rebel- 
lion, and that generation cannot be blinded now. 










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